Hi! I’ve been looking to apply to RPI, though I’m unsure whether the merit aid they offer is great; since my sister is already in college as a sophomore, I don’t want the cost to be overwhelming for my parents. As the title says, I was wondering on how good were merit aid scholarships Rensselaer provided for this year’s incoming class. Thank you for your help!
This totally depends on you and your stats. If you can get your HS GC to nominate you for the RPI Medal that is worth $25K per year.
RPI tends to offer fairly generous merit aid to students that are well above the mid-point of accepted students in stats. Some end up with near and I think maybe even above the RPI medal award. My D got a fairly large merit offer while most of the other schools she applied to either don’t offer any merit at all or are very very limited.
The only way to know however is to apply and wait and see…
@atxfather Did your daughter decide to attend? If so, does she like the school? My daughter is considering RPI and is a medal nominee.
She got into her first choice so we declined RPI even with the high merit offer. We are fortunate in that cost wasn’t a factor. The Arch and things the administration has done were big negatives. We have 3 RPI degrees between us and even with merit that made the cost look like a state school we went elsewhere because of the program and environment
My kid was admitted a year earlier, the scholarship offered was higher than the RPI medal. I strongly suggest you look into ARCH. RPI requires students to take a full course load in the summer after sophomore year and a semester away. Many people tended to associate the semester away with Northeastern’s co-op program, but there were compaints from various postings RPI’s CCPD was not much help (time will tell). This past summer was the first summer that ARCH is mandatory. Many parents in the parents’ FB group already reported that it was stressful for the students. Similar complaints can be found on reddit. The problem is compounded when students are not able to secure co-op jobs in the fall. Again, at this point, there is no published data. If you do apply, ask the hard questions before making decision.
If you dont mind my asking what was her first choice ?