That’s certainly one possibility for “merit” but “merit” could mean lots of things. Stanford goes big into athletics. Perhaps merit could mean they’ll only take students who placed in the top 10 in their state in some athletic competition. Perhaps merit means if your parents didn’t attend, you won’t get in.

Merit doesn’t have to mean SAT scores.

It could mean many things, but you’d still need to explain the monocultural freakshow remark.