And you can’t afford either. So remove them !!
I point to Arizona. It’s accessible to ABQ and in budget with the 4.0. And strong in engineering.
Then there’s nm state or UTEP.
Texas Tech isn’t close. And you need to be a bordering county to TX to get a price break.
UC Col Springs could work.
But if wants to come home, send in state.
Best of luck.
I have been really surprised by some of the merit offers my son got. I never would have thought he would have been eligible. I wouldn’t count on merit offers but I would at the very least apply to see if they are schools your son is interested in. (none of them are schools that would make any list of giving huge merit but at least 3 or 4 have brought down costs enough that with room and board and tuition it is 35k or less from an original 70-80k)
It looks like $25,000 a year is the max this family would like to spend.
I think this kid could have a number of options where merit aid could cover all of tuition…if their stats continue in the same way.
And UNM definitely fills their criteria. Cost, major, location (close to home but that doesn’t mean the student will be home all the time…just that they can).
Oh, my gosh, go for the free tuition! I say that as a professional engineer. ABET means it’s fine. And as I have posted over and over, engineers who hire really don’t care if you went to Rice or New Mexico.
I had very high stats - although it would be different today, back when I got out of high school, I probably could have gone to any college I wanted. Austin is my hometown and my dad was a professor at UT-Austin. But the University’s tuition was $4 a credit hour and the engineering school was good.
I had a great time. I never felt “cheated” going to school in my hometown. Even though a lot of kids from my high school went to UT, they were in different majors and I never saw any of them, even a close friend who lived in a dorm near me.
Don’t saddle yourself with a lot of debt for “prestige.” It’s just not worth it.
Public or private? Many of these schools have tables (the publics) so you can see up front.
Many privates have to immensely discount to win over the consumer or they can’t fill all their seats.
They were private and do not have engineering programs. I was just trying to say if her kiddo loves a school I would still apply because sometimes merit can be surprising. (none of them are large public R1 institutions though which might be needed with engineering- I have no idea).
I would do this with a HUGE caveat, an up front budget, and an understanding that it’s a firm no if it doesn’t hit that number. This forum is littered with stories of parents who let their kids apply to an out of budget “dream school” and they got in. Then they ask the form if it’s “worth it.” Have the budget conversation NOW.
Yes, I wanted to say view it like winning the lottery, and I wouldn’t do it a lot of places. But for this poster it sounds like her kiddo has the ideal anyway- they want to stay close to home, they can afford the school near them, it has all the programs they want- I think they already won.
Seems like UNM is an obvious choice here. It looks like either commuting or dorming at least in the first year is within budget. Note that commuting from home is not free (food and utilities at home + commuting costs), though it is typically less than dorming.
Some mention of WUE was made up thread. Basically, this means 1.5 times in state tuition at some other public schools in the western region. But that would still be more than free tuition.
If my local flagship offered majors of interest to my children, I’d encourage them to attend it.
A student living in a dorm is away from home. Mom and Dad can promise not to stop by unless invited. They can also encourage the student to stay on campus weekends, at least for the first few months.
As an added incentive I would offer the student one or more of the following -
Literally going to do this in a very specific way TODAY.
I understand the issue. I lived in ABQ. There just aren’t many colleges with a 3 hour or even a 6 hour driving radius. UTEP and NMSU are 4 hours away, Colorado College and CSU-Colorado Spring are 6 hours. Anywhere else is going to one or more flights.
D2 only came home at the end of semester and spent some spring breaks with friends who lived closer to her college than NM was. Spending all day flying is exhausting (and expensive!) and managing move-in/move-out remotely is a pain.
Plus in case of an emergency (either at college or at home) getting back and forth can be a major issue. D1 actually did her freshman year at Cal Poly-SLO (and hated it , btw…), and getting her to college and home was a travel nightmare of limited options and frequent missed connections.
Good point. Our daughter went to school almost exactly 500 miles from home. The drive from Maine to central Pennsylvania is not fun! It took seven hours including a short break to eat. There were really no other good options except for driving her. The bus took FOREVER, and there wasn’t an airport nearby. My dad got her a used car, and at least that took the pressure off us.
UNM + living on campus is a great option.
(With the savings, your child could have internships in any city regardless of stipend provided).
However, so much can change between now and Spring senior year, I would encourage exploring options that allow your child to experience a new area of the country but remain affordable without parental debt:
first, WUE options such as Utah and the PNW if s/he’s okay with the cooler, humid weather (Cal poly Pomona and Humboldt would also provide some cultural differences, Humboldt honorary PNW imho). Second, colleges further away in case s/he realizes s/he is now okay with it: Alabama, but why not Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana, NYS, etc. Hoping for sufficient merit.
Maine’s flagship match could make it work, too.
Then you can look into different, more hands-on experiences, like WPI, Case Western, or UCincinnati’s co-op program. They definitely offer merit and you’d have a regional hook at Case and WPI.
Rice, Olin… only offer need-based aid so make sure to run the NPC.
With a budget presented ahead of time, your child would know anything above budget (so, 25k from you + 5.5k federal loans max) would be off the table. But applying to a variety of schools, nearby and far, would keep options open for Spring senior year.
Some kids are definite they want to stay close and then… really regret that decision made by their “younger” self. Others don’t budge. And you can’t know till they choose 
S23 was in love with a school “you can’t get to from here” (or anywhere, really). Or compromise was that it would be on his list for grad school as he could take care of all the logistics once he was 21+ and had his own transportation.
They may wish they had gone farther from home, but the reality is that they aren’t writing a huge check each month to pay back a loan. WPI is not going to come in under 25K. Either will UMN or Iowa.
In response to the EXCELLENT advice and insights in this thread (thank you thank you thank you), our family had the frankest and most specific conversation we had on budget we’ve had thus far.
Where we’ve landed:
We can go up to $25k a year net (all in) and will not need to take out loans. I did talk about how spending less than this would open up $$ for other things (like study abroad). I also floated the idea of going to UNM but not living at home.
There is a world where we can consider up to $45k a year net (all in) with extreme caution because it would require loans (and while we would repay a good deal of them if this happened we made it clear that they would have to help repay the loans as well). I agree with all of the advice here about how UNM is a great option. I will be encouraging it. After talking with everyone, for the right school (we would have to really, really think about this before he accepts), we can consider this as an option, but it would have to have ALOT in its favor.
I feel better about this, because the budget and loans conversation felt really “floopy” (since the PLUS limit is “whatever the tuition is” yikes) until we really nailed it down.
Just to be clear, I do not wish to go into debt and we did not decide to say it out loud as an option lightly. In the same way, I want to give my child reasonable freedom within reasonable limits to consider their future and options. It’s an ongoing conversation, I am sure. I would love to continue hearing insights from this amazing and wise community! Thank you so much for all of your input thus far!!
It’s wonderful that you were able to have that kind of direct conversation at this stage in the process. 
Many families don’t get to this part until after they start getting acceptances and are trying to figure out how to pay for it all!
Having a budget that you can stay within, without loans, is truly the best. Our S23 considered some great schools that would have been on the high end of our budget… and ended up close to home with a much more comfortably affordable budget number. It is hard to overemphasize how much this reduces stress for everyone in our family, including the college kid himself.
We can consider up to $45k a year net (all in) with extreme caution because it would require loans
That’s $80K - so that’s a financial strangulation in most cases - so you really can’t consider it.
And there’s annual cost increases.
Some can eventually save money - living off campus, not eating out. But others go into cities, ubers, travel, go Greek- and that can add thousands, etc.
So i encourage you to find loan free options - and as you saw with the Rice Investment, there are other top schools where you might get sufficient aid, etc… The question becomes what your need is - and then does he indeed want engineering or something else.
Best of luck.
I think there is a very important thing to know. Engineering is very egalitarian right out of the gate. Beyond that it is almost purely meritocratic. There literally is no correlation between where a person goes to school and whether or not they will be one of the ones who thrives in the elite positions. What is correlated is curiosity and work ethic.
We didn’t send our son to the cheapest school, but we had saved the money to pay for up to $200k. We knew though that he would have been fine at our state flagship. What we were paying for was the experience, not in terms of being better per se, but being different. Had it required leverage, we wouldn’t have done it.
It’s hard to overstate the drag debt has on wealth building.
The University of New Mexico belongs to National Student Exchange. NSE is a consortium of almost 200 schools that allow up to a year of exchange at any of the other schools while paying no more than what you are paying already at your home school. Basically NSE was created for cases just like yours-- kids who choose an in-state school for practical reasons, but want to experience “going away” for school too. NSE also has the advantage of credits that transfer pretty seamlessly. This is especially important for engineering students because they need to follow ABET requirements.
A lot of really interesting schools participate, including many such as Cal Poly SLO, Iowa State, and University of MN that have really strong engineering: National Student Exchange - Campuses / Location