I assumed 25K was the maximum net price per year. You are right that this needs to be clarified.
The cost of attendance for Rutgers is now indeed about 35K per year, and will be even higher two years from now. Based on the non-scientific survey I made last spring of my son’s high school classmates, my take is that getting the 10K merit scholarship now requires admission to the Honors College, and to get admitted to it via the SAS you need about a 1530 single-sitting SAT score. It is even higher for SOE where I suspect you might need a 1570 single-sitting score. I don’t know anybody that got more than 10K this school year (I know some kids who did just a couple of years ago). I know that a 1550 single sitting or a 1580 superscore is not enough anymore to get more than 10K even at SAS (or some unknown other factors play a role).
On the other hand, an excellent student can fairly easily get a full tuition scholarship plus free room at the NJIT Albert Dorman Honors College, which would leave a net price of about 10K per year. Over four years that is a 100K difference compared to full price Rutgers. It is not small money!
And a student that gets NHRP status will find some good options outside of the Northeast with a net price around 20K per year, even factoring travel costs. Over four years, that is a 60K difference compared to Rutgers full price.
To be fair, such good student even if he or she does not quite make it to Rutgers Honors is likely to get some merit anyway. Potentially 8K per year. So the difference listed are the worst-case scenario.
Still to me it makes sense for the OP to prepare to apply to Rutgers with the hope that merit is forthcoming, to apply to NJIT as a safety, to apply to out-of-state schools that offer big merit to NHRP or based on GPA + SAT scores (with the assumption that NHRP is a solid possibility)… and to Princeton just in case.