Did you child get much less scholarship $$ from WPI then other competitive schools? They aren’t open to appeals either 
Ours were all pretty similar. My DD did get a great merit package from Arizona State that makes total costs for all in the mid 20’s. But she received nothing from Purdue and they are $46-48K a year. Nothing from Ohio State. Her packages from Case, RPI, and WPI were pretty similar. Case being the highest cost by a few thousand. RPI and WPI were only $1K difference in total cost, but WPI merit was higher with just a small FA package. We like that, as we expect our income to get higher in the next few years. Overall most schools will not meed the need of your FAFSA EFC unfortunately. None of ours did except for Arizona State, but that is a straight up merit package for grades/scores.
The noice thing about WPI’s merit scholarship is that there is not a minimum GPA to keep track of. As long as the student passes 11 classes out of 12 in a calendar year, are ok. Some schools ask the kids to maintain a certain GPA, and they risk loosing their scholarship while getting adjusted to the new rigor/environment.
did you contact them to appeal and were told from admissions that they won’t consider it? I was planning to have my son contact them with his much more generous merit awards from comparable schools.
Yes I did and they pretty much said “it is what it is” - they do not take any appeals and what other schools give is irrelevant to them
Unfortunately WPI was my son’s first choice but gave the lowest merit of any other school -only $10,500 per year. He got between 18-20 from everywhere else. We did send an appeal email and got a very blunt “we don’t do that” response. Having looked at the acceptances over the last few years, it it evident that there is a big difference between what is offered to boys and girls. I don’t have a problem with WPI prioritizing improving their female:male ratio. I just wish there had been a way to see that there were two different levels of “merit” awards before letting my son fall in love with an unaffordable choice. He’s fortunate to have some other great choices so I really can’t complain. I just hope that future male applicants check out these discussions and see that a realistic merit award seems to be between $10-15k so they can make informed decisions.
Thank you for posting this. My son too received much more award money from his other acceptances, but of course this is the school he likes the most. He was offered $11,000 per year and RPI offered $19,000 in comparison. Other schools offered more, but he’s not interested in their programs as much. We are waiting for CMU, but don’t think he’ll be accepted there, and if by some slim chance he is, there will be no money offer. We are going to accepted student day for both WPI and RPI, and if he’s accpeted to CMU, theirs too. Then he will choose his school.
@Off2college19
Having searched as best I can on the WPI website, I cannot find data on the FA awards broken down by sex. I did find data which showed a higher acceptance by women than men among admitted applicants. This may be influenced by higher average awards to women.
I just heard that an alumnus has been recently annotated as a billionaire. I do have to wonder why a university with over $100B endowment (not WPI) and a tax free status is charging anyone tuition and rejecting 95% of their applicants?
Guess who?
My older daughter was accepted to WPI last year and got the maximum presidential merit scholarship. Based on data here, boys with similar stats got about 1/3 what D did. D went to another school. This year D#2 applied…max women’s scholarships are lower this year and hers is lower than the max I’ve seen, so it seems they are moving towards bringing things more into balance.
What is the Maximum Presidential Scholarship?
Hi! Current student here. WPI has a very, VERY, poor financial aid program. I received $34,000 for a presidential scholarship. I was a transfer student with A and B grades and I also have a lot of technical background. This appears to be on the upper end of the spectrum and I am not complaining whatsoever. However, the school is very stingy with its money because it’s for-profit. Many of my friends here have had funds taken away with no good reasons. My pell grant disappeared one day and it took 3 weeks to find out that the director screwed up the math. You will not get any answers from the department unless you bother them- in person- for weeks.
WPI will also, on no circumstances, appeal your aid. So don’t even bother.
Also, the way they treat their veteran students is ridiculous.
Stick to UMass, RPI, or RIT.
Cheers!
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Thanks for the into - silly question but is the $34K per year - and was it Merit of Financial Aid? Did you look at Clarkson University?
I finished WPI on the GI bill in 1970, and financial aid was tight then. Never received aid above the GI bill and it was just enough in those days to pay only tuition. This was a better deal, I believe, than is available today as the GI bill was more generous and the relative cost of college was lower. I worked 16 hours every weekend off campus to cover all other expenses.
You are going overboard when you call it a ‘for profit’ University. According to the the WPI Common Data Set (CDS) the university spent over $53,271,326 on undergraduate student assistance from their own funds in 2018 . Their endowment sounds like a lot of money as it is just over $500,000. This may be respectable by national standards, but not close to the funds of MIT, IVY and many well established LA colleges. As an alumnus I can vouch that there are no stock dividends paid out to stock holders (i.e., alumni), in fact, it goes the other way.
This is the first I have heard that students " have had funds taken away with no good reasons." Evidently you have inside information on their FA status. The reported WPI FA data does not show a drop in FA to undergraduates as the aid progresses from first year through fourth year students.
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@KirkingItUp it seems that you are desilusioned with WPI! According to your other post, you are looking at a possible second transfer this year. I am sorry you have not yet found your ideal school.
As a current parent however, I have a totally different view on WPI’s merit aid practices. I have found them to be in line with competing schools and I am certainly glad that there is no minimum GPA requirement to keep the scholarship at the awarded levels (you have to pass 11 of 12 classes per year to keep the full amount - that is fair).
WPI has one of the highest retention rates in the nation, retaining 97% of their freshman cohort. I think this is a good testimony for the school. If there are so many dissatisfied students as you suggest, woujdn’t that be reflected in their retention rates?
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Data correction:
Left three zeros off the WPI endowment… It is over $500,000,000 and not $500,000 but still not in the billion dollar plus club.
Picking up on “mardong’s” point:
The following graphs show WPI’s retention rates with our Carnegie comparison group. This is one commonly used performance measure used in higher education. Go the the following address and press on “benchmarking” to see these measures. @ https://www.wpi.edu/offices/institutional-research/data-dashboards.
In this comparison group, only Cal Tech, CMU, MIT and Tufts are in the 95% plus retention group. These are STEM Universities. All of these universities on this high end with WPI have endowments way over the billion dollar mark.
Did you loose your Pell grant because of this error or were they able to fix it?
WPI '67