Don't worry about National Merit! Rare are the people who get it and many many more people go to college than even get a National Merit nod. And it is so possible to go to those places without pulling a ton of scholarship strings, and even if you get National Merit you'd probably have to find and pull those strings anyway - believe me, colleges don't care *that* much about how you perform on the PSAT as a junior. Grades and essays are becoming far, far, far more important than standardized tests.

Are you really planning on taking a gap year after high school? to do what?