Thanks to everone for their advice. It was helpful.
My son will be studying BioEng or ChemE. He wants Rice because he wants to do undergraduate research, which is very limited at UF (due to its size). Hard to argue with this reason.
He has submitted to ED. We have told him that we will pay the first 3 years only. If he is passing up free ride, he will pay year 4+. It gives him 3 years to save up 23K and focuses him on finishing on time.
As for the NPC FA calculator, I’m surprised there were no comments on its accuracy. However, there are other threads on CC about how income and home equity skew these private school calculators. Specifically for me, the calculator says that if I ask my employer to reduce my pay by 14K, then my FA goes from 25K to 48.3K. Put another way, it seems to be saying that I get $23K less aid for earning $14K more (that $130K barrier). This seems inaccurate - will find out in December. (But then, life is not always fair.)