Possible merit scholarships?

As others have said getting a nomination for Jefferson or Morehead Cain is just getting your foot in the door. My daughter has similar stats (1550 SAT, 4.0 UW/4.9 W, 1 point away from NMSF, one primary EC that she is heavily invested in with a few others) and she did not even get admitted to UVA (being OOS makes UVA admission even more difficult).

It’s a tough road to try to get super high merit and there really is no predicting it unless the school offers guaranteed merit based on stats alone. So my suggestion would be to go after just one or 2 of these competitive scholarships while applying more broadly to schools a tier down that have a higher probability of paying out a higher merit award.