@tallgrass At OU, there’s an annual cycle where students can apply for smaller departmental scholarships ranging from several hundred dollars to several thousand. One of our guides said she’d been awarded an extra $5,000 this way, from the marketing dept, if I’m remembering right. Others said they’d been given smaller amounts ranging from $1,000 to $3,000. Students can be offered more than one of these, so if it’s a thousand here and $1500 there, it adds up.
I believe it’s @3scoutsmom who said that her costs went down to zero after a combo of outside and extra scholarships at OU.
Re: ASU and Bama - for whatever reason, ASU never piqued S’s interest. He likes Bama on paper, but says it’s pretty far away from home (we’re in CA) and since the financial package is similar to OU, he’d take OU if he wanted something like that. I think both are great offers, though, and we’d have been happy to take him there if he’d wanted to see them.
Re: engineering - I don’t know much about engineering and that’s what your D is interested in, right? I know UTD, Tech and UNM all have engineering, and UNM has Sandia and another major (defense contractor?) lab right nearby for internships / employment opportunities. Not trying to push any of those schools, just saying it’s there if you wanted to look deeper. 