<p>Pro28 - you are right, although Northwestern and Notre Dame do not either. Not sure about MIT and CalTech, but in any case some of these other schools, like Chicago and Duke, have pretty limited merit aid. Few students get it. So while on paper the majority of top 50 schools might offer merit aid, the reality is that maybe half or less offer what I, at least, consider a significant amount. Also many of these offer no “automatic consideration” merit aid, but instead you have to apply separately. Schools like Miami and Tulane consider all students for merit when they apply and in fact give quite a bit. So I think the intent here was to find the ones that offer a fairly significant amount, although that is my inference.</p>