Carachel2 - I am so sorry to hear this! I really thought, based upon your daughter’s scores and class rank, and from our PM conversations that something was amiss (missing form or something).
I don’t really understand it because, for my non-NMF, junior engineering daughter, I just paid to the university around $1,500 for this semester–TOTAL, after university and outside merit scholarships. Now, of course, that doesn’t count the apartment and food cost (five girls in one house) and my daughter’s internships pay for her spending money and books. But, thankfully, we have small-town housing and food costs and they are so much better than my friends with students in big cities.
My older engineer who graduated didn’t have as much merit help but I think the most I paid in a year for her was $16K including housing and food and even that went down. I think the costs (29K) you are quoting have some crazy fees like in-state travel fees of $2,500 which don’t make sense to me (I know Texas is a big state but in-state travel costs that high?) and other optional costs. Those travel costs sound like my friends have to pay to send their students out of state.