Thank you for the replies. We got an early start on the college search process so have already done much of the recommended research on which schools offer sufficient merit. Great info for those early in the process though.
I received wonderful feedback on schools in this post of mine from last summer, just for context:
I am just trying to crowdsource info about appealing schools that we may have disregarded due to cost based on our research, that may now be in budget due to improved merit opportunities. This info is too recent to show up in the Common Data Set, for example. I will also continue stalking the results threads from this year as that is likely where the hot tips are. We just don’t want to miss a gem that has newly become a possibility!