<p>I've been accepted to Rochester, and while it's currently my first choice, I likely won't be able to go due to finances. I've gotten generous merit awards from all of the other schools I was accepted to, but so far I have no merit awards from Rochester, so I'm assuming they have decided not to give me anything. Now, I've heard of other people appealing their packages from other schools by showing what they got from peer institutions. Is this possible at Rochester, and if so, what kind of colleges would qualify as peer institutions? I'm in a technical major so I was thinking places like RPI, RIT, UMass possibly. Any idea how I would go about this?</p>
<p>The problem is none of those schools are considered UR’s peers so any awards you received from them really aren’t a strong basis for an appeal.</p>
<p>But that said–you can always ask. The worst they can say is no.</p>
<p>Okay, thanks. Do you know what kind of schools would be considered their peers? Nothing really comes to mind, but maybe that’s just me. I did apply to other schools than just those, but those were the main ones I was thinking of attending other than Rochester.</p>
<p>Schools like Northeastern might be considered among UofR’s peers. RPI I would say is pretty close so I would use that one if that is one of the higher amounts awarded. I know alot of kids who use UofR as a fall back for Carnegie Mellon and Cornell.</p>
<p>Yeah I always thought RPI was fairly similar to U of Rochester as far as the strength of its technical programs go, so I guess I’ll try with that school and hope for the best. I actually did apply to both Carnegie Mellon and Cornell and got rejected, with U of R as a fall back, haha.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if all of the merit scholarships have been sent? I would’ve thought that RPI would be on the same level as U of R.</p>
<p>Well, I emailed them about whether scholarship notifications have already been sent, and they basically said that I wasn’t going to get anything if I didn’t hear back yet. I think you should hear back a week after your acceptance to find out what you got with merit (I got accepted on the third wave which was a couple weeks ago I think).</p>
<p>They sent me the acceptance letter package with scholarship letter enclosed. Mine is Phi Theta Kappa scholarship.</p>