I think you will need to look first at which private schools actually give a lot of merit. A lot of the more selective schools give merit to VERY FEW very top students, or give it to their athletes or students who come from an underrepresented population. Generally privates that give a lot of merit to a lot of students are schools that are less selective or where your student is kinda a step above the general student population academically. They use merit to entice. When my older child applied a few years ago she was given a lot of merit from Case Western, but I think that was the only private school that gave her merit. She did get merit from Minnesota that brought it down to the same level as our instate option.