If this helps, @willibeeatingriceandbeans, its quite likely your DS, if he has good grades, will get very lucrative internships after soph. and junior years, and may even get some departmental/engineering awards/scholarships that will, combined, easily cover $23K. And having to pay only 23K for a year at Rice (assuming these numbers don’t change by his senior year) is a great position to be in. Good luck!
Sounds like your employer might be able to provide you with a deferred compensation.
@willibeeatingriceandbeans That’s exactly how the grant works. Once you make more than the cut-off, you are in the next tier.
@jym626 That $23,000 doesn’t include room, board, books, etc., so it’s really more like $44k
@Redhounds - I got the impression form the OP that the total OOP for the student (tuition/fees/housing/labs) was $23K. OP, can you clarify?
Remember, if your wife gets a job and your son has income, your financial aid award will be reduced and could disappear completely.
God points about the impact of the students’ income, especially a profile school like Rice.
There are campus job opportunities that significantly defray the COA. DS looked at a job with the girls’s swim team (that could have been fun) , but we decided for him it might be a lot to juggle (he was looking at it freshman year) but it would have cut the tuition by 2/3.
If you want to keep Rice as possibility, why not just skip ED and apply RD to Rice. Tnen you can compare actual offers. He may hear from UF sooner and have that in the bag. I wouldn’t ED.
And if the $ numbers don’t come in as expected for ED, you’d have to decline it? 
@jym626: Thanks for info about internships. That was our suggestion to him as well. Job experience; interesting work; adds maturity.
@Redhounds: Second child in college for his year 3+ (impacts FA calc), so only 23K cost year 4 (tutition\dorm\etc).
@juststaycool: If he pays year 4+, then we are good.
As for the calculator. I agree that FA is per the schools priority and any FA is a GIFT! Just consider the following and what the NPC Calculator is saying…Married family; only child; 200K in savings; no other assets in parent or child. I calculate…
Salary $129.9 K ==> FA= 48330 OOP = 18,690
Salary $130.1 K ==> FA= 30115 OOP = 36,900
The income diff is only $200, but OOP doubles. Just wondering if the NPC is accurate to actual offers of FA when just above the bend incomes.
ED to Rice and RD to UF ended yesterday. Applied to both.
Due to Rice Investment fund (free\reduced tuition), it will be very competitive for RD. Early decision appears to have better acceptance rates. That is debated elsewhere on CC.
For our son, it is Rice or UF. So, we are ED to Rice (find out December) and RD to UF (Jan). There are others for RD, but not really as they are less desirable than UF in quality or comparable cost.
For me, my DD’s education was well worth the money spent, but that is because I value education over just about anything else. One DD went to a Top 20 public university and majored in ChemE. The other went to UChicago and is majoring in its Molecular Engineering program. The difference in opportunities is/was astounding especially in the area of research. Any school that manages a National Lab is just going to prefer its own students for internships etc. It may not matter (or it still might) which school they went to 10 years down the line but the head start given to my DD at UChicago will follow her for some time to come. Rice is definitely worth it, if it is financially feasible, or you can by a couple of new cars which will be worthless in 20 years. JMHO.
While I think a great college education is worth the price I don’t agree with your statement that you will buy news cars with the savings.
The choice is more like Rice vs paying for graduate school in full or using the savings for a large downpayment on a new house which will likely appreciate in value significantly over time.
This is the real dilemma for many families. I still choose Rice but it’s a more difficult decision using my more reasonable examples.
[quote=“Redhounds, post:42, topic:2070773”]
@willibeeatingriceandbeans That’s exactly how the grant works. Once you make more than the cut-off, you are in the next tier.
I may have spoken out of turn on that. I would email or call Rice and ask if it’s a gradual reduction or a cliff. My understanding was that it is a cliff, but I can’t find anything to confirm that now, so I may have been wrong.
@willbeeatingriceandbeans: do let us know how it turns out (admission and financial aid) for your son. GOOD LUCK!
We are making the exact same decision. We did Rice ED as well. If not accepted, will most certainly do UF. Good luck to you!
If you are rich and do not need to worry about how much aid will be offered, then Rice ED is absolutely the right decision. Applying ED means you can’t compare financial aid packages across universities but you aren’t worried about that because resources aren’t an issue. You’re simply asking which school has the higher ranking, and Rice at #17 beats UF at #34.
For more normal family situations, though, it would be pretty unusual to give up a free ride at #34 in order to roll the dice on financial aid at #17. It would be more understandable if you were looking at Princeton (#1) or Harvard (#2) rather than Rice because you might reasonably think a top-of-the-world undergraduate education would be worth the extra expense. Or if you are a Texan and your free ride is at UT (#48) instead of UF (#34), you might see #17 as a big enough jump to be worth giving up a free ride.