Some schools give merit for certain stats, and a few more competitive awards.
In the links above it spells out some of the criteria they might use: NMF, top applicants, first generation, URM, community involvement, etc.
If the school is affordable with the lower merit award based primarily on stats, it can stay on the list. If the child ends up getting a higher award, it’s icing on the cake.
As long as you have some automatic merit schools on the list, or local schools that are affordable, then you can add a few competitive merit schools to the mix.