<p>My son is leaning toward RPI. He has received the medal scholarship of $15,000 per year but we are out-of-state and this is just a small amount of the total of close to $50,000 for tuition, room, board and misc. exp. such as travel.</p>
<p>Here is our situation:
1. He will only qualify for merit aid.<br>
2. We need a way to finance approximately $15,000+ more of the tuition to cover current and future costs. We have about $15,000 currently covered.
3. We don't want to borrow lots of funds or do lots of student loans. Our position is we consider it silly to go in debt for college and have it hang over your head for years.</p>
<p>Here are the questions:
1. What if any extra financial aid might we receive from RPI?
2. Any suggestions on how to request/apply for additional financial aid?</p>
<p>How much is "lots of student loans?" I wound up with around $20k total and was able to pay off $5k with the work from spring and summer after I graduated. My girlfriend is going to wind up with around $30k in debt after finishing her MS in EE, but since the typical salary for them is at least $70k a year, she shouldn't have a problem paying that down pretty quickly since she prefers to live frugally. Going into engineering really changes the amount of impact loans will have on you versus being, say, a sociology and international relations double major with a minor in Russians (i.e. my brother).</p>
<p>Did your son get into any other schools of similar caliber as RPI with better financial aid offers? I had gotten into CMU and RPI with RPI giving me a considerably better scholarship. I sent that info to CMU and they matched the level of aid. Sent that back to RPI and they increased their offer a little bit. CMU didn't match the second increase, but was a much better fit for my interests, so I was able to wrangle an extra $7k-8k a year out of CMU just by doing that.</p>