Again, you are still assuming he will not qualify for any financial aid, which is not known to us. It is ok to apply to a financial reach school as long as you accept that if you are accepted that if they don’t offer a combination of merit and need based aid to get you to where you need to be, you will not be able to attend. But fine, I’ll concede Boulder is a stretch without a bunch of things aligning. What is known however is that in the original list, CU Boulder is one of the schools most known for Aero (along with several others). There are a lot of the top schools for Aerospace (in no particular order) missing from this list (Rensselaer, Va Tech, Michigan, UT Austin, Texas A&M, Ga Tech, the Ohio, NCSU, for example). But even though most of them are public, they are OOS and most are going to end up being higher cost. Also, still unknown whether the OP is looking more for a career in the space aspect of Aerospace or the Air aspect of aerospace. Because that could change the list some. I would also add University of Kansas - it has always had a very strong Aerospace program - if you want to live in the middle of nowhere (Kansas). But to the best of my knowledge, they are strong aircraft/aviation-based aerospace program. A quick look at their web site shows that they do now have a couple of Space Vehicle Design courses, so I assume they give seniors the option for space vehicle design 1 & 2 vs aircraft design 1 & 2 - but other than that, I do not know how much other opportunity they have in the realm of classes, research and projects that are space based. But research on the website and contacting the department could answer those questions. And it should fall below the $40,000 mark even in the most expensive dorm rooms - before GPA based merit scholarships. (KU Distinction Award - GPA between 3.84 and 3.94 - $14,000/yr OOS)