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<p>Do the other schools guarantee to meet full demonstrated need? If not, then they may just not give you any need-based aid at all, even once your EFC goes down to $25K and your need increases. Also usually part of the package to meet the need portion is loans, so that’s money you’re going to pay eventually too, even if it’s in your aid package. </p>
<p>Unless you hate RPI so much that you’d never consider going there, I think you should certainly apply given that you have the assured merit money there. If you don’t want to apply to RPI then you need to find some other school(s) that you would be happy to go to that you are pretty much guaranteed to get into, and that are guaranteed to be within your budget (either because their costs are lower, or they offer guaranteed merit scholarships, etc.)</p>