<p>MADad - Interested in your method to engage RPI on aid revision. We’re heading there in a week, and would like to touch on aid. Right now, more would be better to say the least. Looks like RPI cost is at the top compared to other schools being considered (Syracuse, CMU, Princeton, Lehigh).</p>
<p>BillysDad2014—</p>
<p>S’s top choice, actually is Lehigh, and he hasn’t heard yet re: RD admission. Hope to hear soon on both admission, and fin aid (if all goes well admissions-wise). If he gets into Lehigh with a decent offer, I think he’ll go there. If he doesn’t get into Lehigh, then we’ll talk about the next step.</p>
<p>We visited Lehigh for 2 days as well, during their engineering event (forgot the name). We were teamed up with engineering students, who gave briefings, and took us through rotational tours of all the major engineering labs. Our “group”, was just two applicant/parent sets and the student leader. One thing that came through is that greek life is very big. MADad & Others, how does greek life compare between RPI and Lehigh? I didn’t think it was a “neccessity” to join in at RPI, but seemed more so at Lehigh.</p>
<p>I’m a Rensselaer Medalist and considered myself to be a fairly good applicant for Rensselaer, but only got $15,000 in merit aid. With $5500 in unsub. loans, that still means a hefty $38000 price tag to be paid. I was really expecting a little higher, but if I do decide to attend, I hope petitioning FA might help.</p>
<p>mircus - my daughter has the same situation as you for merit/loans. We will be talking with FA on our visit. Since we also have a son in college (same cost school), we were hoping for more.</p>
<p>Yeah, we’re in the same boat, D is at a Seven Sisters school, so we thought the having 2 in college should have helped more than it did.</p>
<p>Has anyone else not received an aid letter? DS is a medalist so we know something must be coming but I’m trying to find out if something fell through the cracks.</p>
<p>My daughter received an e-mail notifying her that an update was posted to her portal. The financial aid letter was reached through a link on the portal.</p>
<p>For reference, she was awarded $24,200 for her Medal Scholarship, which puts the cost just over $1,000 more than one of her other options.</p>
<p>I was offered 52k in aid. 7.5k was in loans, the Rensselaer Leadership Award was 17k. The rest is need-based grants.</p>
<p>It seems like a lot of money to me, but my family’s EFC is 0. I will have to get additional loans to pay the other 7k that is not covered in my aid, 7k of which is already loans to begin with. 14k in loans a year for four years seems like a lot for a school that told me they meet 100% need. My parents are already having to pay off my mom’s college loans, and my brother is going to college in-state(Florida) for free; something that I’m refusing to do. They won’t be paying anything for my college.</p>
<p>At the risk of seeming incredibly greedy since I was offered more financial aid than anyone else I know, should I ask them for more? And how do I even do that?</p>
<p>I’ve gotten scholarships almost everywhere I applied except RPI. I have received neither an email, nor any indication that there is an update regarding a scholarship or financial aid. Should I assume I received nothing or could there be something still coming?</p>
<p>@caliskimmer - I would check your application status page. D found out about her award via an e-mail saying that there was an update posted on her application status page. It mentioned nothing about financial aid / scholarships. Would have been easy to miss. Good luck!</p>
<p>@caliskimmer My son hasn’t heard about his scholarship yet either - and he is sure to be getting something since he is a Rensselaer Medalist. I suspect they are still working on some aid packages</p>
<p>YES! If you need more aid and you want to attend tell them. I’m waiting on my package and I too have an EFC of 0 and if the package is not something I can afford I will definitely tell them. So go ahead and ask for more, if they don’t give it to you at least you tried. Also apply for some scholarships I’ve seen your stats and you definitely could grab a bunch.</p>
<p>Definitely push for more aid although know that RPI doesn’t promise to meet full need. I believe they meet about 70%, on average, of financial need, from what I read on the site.</p>
<p>Just got our RPI financial package and D got $22100 for Leadership Award plus a few thousand in loan options. I was hoping the Leadership Award was a merit based award and would be that figure 4 years. It doesn’t say it is for 4 years but I just assumed that. </p>
<p>If she gets a private outside scholarship will RPI reduce the leadership award or will it go towards reducing the EFC? Anyone have insight on this?</p>
<p>Was this a email or smail notification ? My D had her AMC acceptance 2 weeks ago but no info on FA</p>
<p>Outside scholarships have no bearing on merit awards. I believe they are used toward loans first. </p>
<p>Smail2email check the rpi admissions account (all you need is the email address and pw you use). I also received a paper copy in the mail today ( i live in ny) so if you live out of state you should receive a copy very soon.</p>
<p>Got the paper copy in central PA today. Same thing that was attached as an update on the portal.</p>
<p>Thanks Cortana … I just wondered because I saw another family with an EFC 10K more than ours and their leadership award was 10K less than ours. It sort of seemed like the merit award was geared towards family need.</p>
<p>smail2email - Mr D’s online status has not been updated since march 10 and doesn’t even show her as being accepted. I called Finan.Aid office this past thursday and they told me it was mailed out on wed. If you don’t get anything by Tuesday I would call them. My D is also in AMC program and apparently it takes a bit longer for them to get financial aid. I had called the financial aid office on the 12th asking if we will get our decision at the same time or not. They pulled up her account so maybe they put something in there to speed it up - don’t know.</p>
<p>We are soooo happy and thankful, my D is very excited about going to RPI - she is turning down very good options to go to RPI. Everyone we have dealt with so far, including students, seem so friendly and the education is at a good rigor level. Hopefully our perceptions won’t be wrong.</p>
<p>@midhelper - I was wondering the same this about the effect of outside scholarships. My D’s financial aid rep at a peer institution told me that outside scholarships will not decrease merit scholarships but will decrease any additional need based scholarship a student may have. In addition, whether or not outside scholarships reduce loans depends on whether they are subsidized or unsubsidized; unsubsidized loans are not automatically reduced at this school.</p>
<p>Each college has different rules about outside scholarships so RPI moay treat the situation slightly differently. My D will be attending the alternate accepted student day tomorrow so I will be asking about this again.</p>