<p>Carnegie Mellon is one of my favorite schools, and I am still ecstatic that I got in. I would love to attend CMU, but the cost is a huge deterrent. I have gotten into some other schools that I don't find as appealing, but that gave me fairly generous merit scholarships (one of which was RPI). I was hoping to convince Carnegie Mellon to match the scholarship that RPI gave me. I was wondering if anyone on CC could give me some tips on how I should go about doing this. </p>
<p>Is there any (approximate) metric for determining what constitutes a peer institution (such as one of the college rankings)? Also, can peer institutions ever be public, or does Carnegie only consider competitive private offers?</p>
<p>Once you get the official financial aid letter in the mail, there should be a form (mine was hidden in the brochure) that you can fill out and either fax/mail to the FA Office regarding matching award offers from other schools. I called this morning and found out that the earliest you can receive notification about your appeal is April 17 or 18. You can send in the form at any time though.</p>
<p>CMU will only match from certain private institutions. I assume they’ll match their peer institutions and schools in the same/greater caliber (perhaps Ivies?). Also keep in mind to compare apples to apples. In other words, don’t except them to match merit-based scholarships if your need-based grants are roughly the same.</p>
<p>Here is a list of peer institutions:
California Institute of Technology
Cornell University
Duke University
Emory University
Georgia Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Northwestern University
Princeton University
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Rice University
Stanford University
University of Pennsylvania
Washington University in St. Louis</p>
<p>And for anyone who is worried about the next 3 years, the person I spoke with at the FA Office said that if they end up matching another institution’s offer, it’s basically free money and will be secured for your entire undergraduate schooling. They won’t try to take it away after freshman year (unless your income increases drastically or something of the sort).</p>
<p>Hey guys I have a question
I got my financial aid status, but if the CMU grant I received is more than the amount of a scholarship I got for a different university, does that mean I cannot petition/appeal the financial aid at all/ask for a bit more?</p>
<p>Gahhh money is the only thing keeping me away from CMU.</p>
<p>@First Do you think Hopkins counts as a “peer institute”? It’s not on the list posted above, but I did a lot of research and they seem to be pretty evenly matched in almost all aspects, plus US News rates Hopkins math (my prospective major) higher than CMU’s.</p>
<p>I haven’t gotten a financial aid package from CMU yet, but based on other people saying they got less than expected and the fact that JHU was extremely generous, I have a feeling that I’ll end up bargaining with the financial aid office when I do.</p>
<p>Ask for a review for comparison’s sake anyway, whether the other school is considered a peer school or not. They have money to give but they’re neither going to advertise that fact nor are they going to initially give it away. Our D’s in the same boat as, out of the 8 schools she was admitted to, CMU’s package was the least generous. She was told by her admissions counselor when he phoned the night results were posted that she was encouraged to bring any and all offers to them.</p>
<p>@ameliab12: Yes. One of my friends used JHU to get $5k more in grants for SCS. What she did was emphasize how despite CMU’s overall CS program being better, one specific subfield of JHU’s CS program is much much better than CMU’s (this is actually true, but I can’t remember which particular subfield it was).</p>
