Not all the high dollar merit scholarships require interviews. For example, the Cornelius Vanderbilt full tuition merit scholarship at Vanderbilt does not.
Brantly said, “Most people who get these awards are not chasing accolades for the sake of their resume. Their accomplishments are intrinsic to who they are, a reflection of their true selves, rather than a chased-after, sculpted depiction of what they think the colleges want.” This was our experience. My kid was awarded the Cornelius Vanderbilt scholarship. She has no hooks; is not a URM; we did not qualify for need-based financial aid and thus she did not offer Vandy any socioeconomic diversity. She had stellar grades and test scores and great ECs. She truly drove the process in terms of following her passions and engaging in the EC’s and taking the academic course load that supported these passions. Of course it is impossible to say with certainty which factors tipped the scale in her favor, since there is no way we can know. All I can say is that her entire college application and her essays reflected her true, authentic self–nothing was contrived. Whether this was the deciding factor or not, I do not know. She is pursuing an engineering degree, so I would imagine that being a female in a STEM field helped.