Oklahoma and New Mexico really wanted our son.
isaelijohjac- I wasn’t sure how to read the wording for UK’s Patterson award:
The Patterson Scholarship is a renewable scholarship, which provides the cost of tuition, room and board allowance, $1,000 yearly stipend, an iPad2®, and $2,000 for a Summer Education Abroad program.
It says “room and board allowance”- not sure if that means free room and board or just some portion of it since it says “cost of tuition” for the tuition end of it. Maybe its just the way they phrased it.
You’d think by now UK would spring for something newer than an iPad 2. Seriously, sometimes the info colleges give on their websites can be hard to interpret. S17 said that Ole Miss made theirs very easy to find info.
@artie1 UK is a full ride. I think D’s FA package had our cost at $72/year, which I thought was odd. I know there are added expenses for different dorms/meal plan, but I wasn’t under the impression this was a huge expense. Possibly they say allowance because it doesn’t always cover the full cost.
^ Yep. That’s what I’m guessing. Lots of schools’ full rides offer an allowance for a “standard dorm” or some certain category of dorm, as opposed to permitting the student to choose any dorm room on campus.
In our experience, the dorm allowance generally pays for a good, standard room on campus, not a substandard room. I don’t think you’ll have anything to worry about.
An allowance for housing can also be good because, often, that means that the allowance will be credited to your son’s college account and, after all school bills are paid, it will be refunded into your son’s bank account – to be used for off-campus housing or whatever else he wants to use it on.
I’m a big believer in capitalizing on these outstanding NMF packages and aiming for a free to mostly free education, as long as the school fits. Good for you, OP! I hope your son is fully on board, too. 
Thanks SimpleLife. My son is pretty mature so he won’t have any issues. Just want him to get a quality education that we can afford. I was looking at UK but I’m hearing that getting into their Honors college is not a shoo-in even for NMFs.