I dislike that merit aid change philosophically. However, I see where many upper middle class students would go for the money as needs are not always met.
And, I wish schools would get to use numbers of National Merit FINALISTS instead of only those getting money. I could wonder if I would have gotten more NMS money if I had listed UW first eons ago and I purposefully did not encourage our NMF son to list UW as I know others could use the money (we parents made use of our educations to be financially well off). Some of my nonNMS friends were better students than those of us garnering that scholarship.