Are you in a Western Exchange state? If so, you can apply for a WUE scholarship at Utah, Wyoming, Montana, etc. and it would be quite inexpensive.
I agree with the Olin comment. It’s a niche fit school, terrific for the right student. But it should not be added to college lists based solely on the half tuition scholarship. Students that would qualify for admission at Olin would likely have high enough stats to get better deals elsewhere.
I just want to point out the your choice of Univ of Washington could potentially cost you an extra year. UW is one of the few schools that you do not enter in your major. You have to apply after you have completed 1-2 years (I can’t remember when) to that major and if you are not accepted, you will have to wait another year.
I undertand Oregon State has an excellent engineering program so if you want to stay on that coast, you might want to investigate it.
It looks like Washington direct admits a small percentage of frosh into engineering and CS majors, but others get admitted as undeclared, and applying for admission to the major later is very competitive for at least some majors:
http://data.engr.washington.edu/pls/portal30/STUDENT_APPL.RPT_APPLICANT_STATISTICS_YEAR.SHOW_PARMS
Realistically, the cost of not getting into the desired major is being required to choose a less selective major that one can get admitted to, or transferring to some other school to complete the desired major.
Right, but transferring usually means taking additional classes that weren’t accepted during the transfer and the cost of moving. Most schools accept you to your major upon admission, UW is unusual, especially as the flagship school representing the state. Cal Poly has the opposite problem. They admit to a major and it is very difficult to change majors once you are there.
This does vary. For example, Purdue and Minnesota admit engineering frosh into a first year engineering program; completing the frosh courses with a 3.2 GPA is needed to assure admission to a desired engineering major, while those with lower GPAs are admitted on a space-available basis.
It does appear that, for engineering, the most highly selective private schools (whose huge endowments allow them to maintain excess capacity in every major) and some of the less selective schools (where engineering is not a very popular major and where many students leave the major due to the rigor) are more commonly the ones where students have the fewest administrative or capacity-based barriers to changing into engineering majors. Examples include MIT, Stanford, Princeton, CSULA, CSUN, CSUSac.
I don’t think there are only a few schools admit students only into engineering first and the students declare major later. Purdue. Among all the schools my D applied to engineering a couple years ago, only UIUC admits student directly into a major and even that is not absolutely required. If there are only a few, then my D may have applied to all. LOL.
I wasn’t being clear. At most schools you are admitted and are not required to declare your major until later even if you plan to major in something in particular. You simply declare your major later like at the end of Soph year.
At UW, you must apply to be admitted to your intended major after you have completed 1-2 years depending on your major. You are not automatically admitted. You do not “declare” it, you must apply and be accepted to that particular major in order to continue in that major. If you are not admitted, you can hang out 
and take misc classes for another year and try again or you if you are smart, you have also applied to other schools and can transfer.
Check out the GPA’s you need to have at the end of Soph year to apply to the various Engineering depts and GPA is not all they want.
https://www.engr.washington.edu/current/admissions/admitstats
@Lakemom Thanks for the link, but it seems to be far more complicated than what you said. It is also major specific as some, but not all, has pre-admission as freshmen. Most majors on that link said one need to apply after completed freshmen or sophomore year. Some require taking pre-req during the first 2 years before apply to that major. Others does not have that requirement. Other than the freshmen pre-admission to certain majors like ChemE, there is no pre-application requirement for specific major during freshmen admission as you described. It just said one need to apply and enter the program (not to continue in that major) in junior year. In other words, they do direct freshmen admission for a small fraction of certain major and pre-admission to some (already accepted to that major while taking pre-req). For most engineering students, they are admitted as pre-engineering students (without specific major) just like most engineering schools but they may need to take pre-req for their intended major before they apply to that major later on. GPA requirement for certain majors is a kind of typical at many schools and declaring major is not just a self declare but has certain requirements at many schools too. For instance, at UMich CoE, one needs to have GPA above 3.0 to apply/declare BME major. Many schools also have quota limit for each major. In that case, it is also not an automatic process but require application too.
Exactly! It is very complicated to apply to Engineering there. I never said you do a pre application as a freshman to a specific major.
When you apply to UW you are only gaining admission to the school. Only a select few are admitted directly to an Engineering major as freshman, the rest have to apply later. The application process later is competitive. You have to have at least a 3.0 but as you saw, the average GPAs were much higher like 3.5.
I had looked at many engineering programs, like 20-30 schools 3 years ago to compare how they run their engineer programs for my son. UW’s was the least desirable in terms of being able to continue as pre-engineering into engineering itself. Particularly if you are paying out of state fees to have this kind of uncertainty.
It is kind of like Ross business school at UMich. For UW, I think I saw some engineering majors with lower than GPA 3.0 requirement.