I note this is part of why I mentioned that other private colleges may have robust merit programs.
Private colleges are of course aware that to attract some of the students they really want away from good OOS and sometimes in-state programs, they may need to offer a discount from their full COA. They often do that in part through generous need aid, and for some of these colleges that may be enough.
But some of these colleges appear to have found that generous need aid alone is not enough to enroll the classes they really want. So, they adopt merit programs as well.
And as a high level observation, if you are actually competitive for admissions to the sorts of private colleges ranked in the top 20 National Universities by the US News, you are very likely also competitive for merit offers from a wide variety of other private colleges.
Incidentally, some public colleges also try to make their OOS program more competitive with merit. But it is less common, including because for many publics the OOS program is intended to provide revenues that are effectively cross-subsidies for in-state students.
OK, so at that high level, you really have something like five categories to potentially consider as an applicant without need:
Privates without merit, privates with merit, OOS without merit, OOS with merit, and in-state.
Now of course if you are sufficiently wealthy you truly do not care about cost at all, none of this may matter to you. Just pick your favorite whatever category it may happen to fall into.
But if your position is more that there has to be enough additional marginal value to justify any additional marginal cost over your in-state options–that make sense, but depending on how those middle categories work out for you, some of them might well survive such a test.
Indeed, possibly with enough merit, some of your private or OOS options could actually be less expensive than your in-state options, even if you have no ability to get need aid.