<p>WSU, WWU, CWU, EWU would be financial safeties. UW- hardly. 
That said, S got his scholarship about a month after the initial FinAid offer was sent. We went to the Honors admitted students day, showed them S’s other FinAid offers which included merit money and in about 2 days the scholarship notification was in the mail( maybe it was a coincidence, I don’t know) . S lives in the Honors housing and practically everybody there has merit money from UW.
S’s roommate didn’t “waste” anything for anybody, because he WASN’T admitted straight into the major ( PRE-engineering) . it just that plans may change in college. Before S started taking Running Start classes, he thought about a career in the biosciences. After a year of science classes at WSU he changed his mind completely. He then tried humanities, history and PoliSci and found his right place. Thankfully it happened before college, or we would have a cranky biochem major instead of a happy-as-a-clam “PoliSci-Econ-thinking of minoring in Russian” one.</p>