It really should not be that much of an issue for Newbies to get a couple of merits is a short time span, if they set their mind to it (and have a decent amount of active grey matter). For those who want to rank-up, the bottleneck created by the Merit System resides in the mid-to-high ranks, where getting merit at a fairly even rate to a 1 per day ratio is extremely complicated (see re: Isn't this merit thing getting more monopolistic politics?).