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They often don’t offer either.

They only offer financial aid. It is a distinct application process (at least was was I applied). But that financial aid is extremely generous. I.e. you can have family income of over 100K and still qualify.

A high school friend who went to an Ivy missed this part. She thought that not offering merit scholarships meant you couldn’t get any money to reduce the cost.

It's a relatively recent trend so the anecdotes could be from before the elite universities started doing it.

When you get off the waitlist it's common to receive substantially less financial aid. There might be some other causes too.

Those anecdotes must be from over a decade ago.