My guess is that they don’t want people to think that getting invited to Reilly means you will get a merit scholarship. But thinking about it logically how could the students receiving the 32 merit scholarship awards not be from among the ~160 ND considers to be “the best of their applicant pool”? In any event, from reading past posts on this site on this subject, and also knowing a few people that have received merit scholarships, they’ve been invited to Reilly.