I think OP’s kids are fine with the Rutgers back up. I very much doubt MIT, Stanford, Ivy league schools on list will give any money even with two in college. But there are schools on the list that do give merit. I personally know of kids who got merit money from UMIch, UCLA, Georgia Tech which was surprising to me. And their stats were not as high as OP’s. I even know kids who get merit money from NYU.
CMU will negotiate at times, but not likely to go from zero financial aid to anything in grants, and they don’t give merit through their admissions office. The very few associated merit awards that some of these schools give are from private sources and are very rare.
UTAustin gives about 15 kids the 40 Acres Scholarship—chances of getting that very tiny. And maybe a couple of those kids are OOSers. You’d do better checking out ruce that does have that Initiative giving some families with higher thresghikdsbofbincine to qualify for aid.
@Al73 , what are NPCS from the most selective schools saying you can expect to be asked to pay? Do use the calculators in the actual schools’ website as things change and other calculators are not likely to be as accurate.