<p>If you get into Cockrell Honors before enrolling, you’re guaranteed a merit award from $20k-$48k which should bring down your total cost to $60k-$88k over four years. Since you’re top 1%, unless you seriously botched your test scores this shouldn’t be a reach. Just remember to apply for Cockrell Engineering Honors; it’s a lot easier to get into than Dean’s, Plan II, and Turing but it still gets you a good bit of money.</p>
<p>UT Austin is a solid engineering school and while you’ll be paying significantly more to go OOS, odds are you won’t receive a proportionately better education. Before factoring price in, UT Austin is solid but beatable (not easily, of course). After, it’s got no real challengers outside HYPMSC.</p>
<p>(To be entirely fair, I made a different decision than what I’m advocating here, but I’m not in the same situation as you as I’m working on a different major with a certain set of goals + I receive financial aid so the additional cost isn’t that high and the return on investment appears to offset it; it comes down to a lot of factors that go beyond program quality- which, imho, isn’t really something you can interpret in a linear fashion- and class size)</p>