@aandaparent Unfortunately some people don’t see your reasonable argument. I’ve read in their reddit how some students are paying the full tuition without aid, even if they were in CS or some other high paying salary major it doesn’t appear rational. To earn $10k less because you attended CWRU instead of RPI would be sensible.
Now on the other hand, if a student received plenty of FinAid from RPI, well that’s a different story.
@RightCoaster - FYI, we also didn’t submit the FAFSA, and we received significant merit aid.
“To earn $10k less because you attended CWRU instead of RPI would be sensible.” - I didn’t realize there was such a big difference between the two. Is there statistics for the salary difference?
Paying full tuition people might be in a different financial situation. If we were to pay what FAFSA suggests, we would have no savings left.
@thshadow thanks for noting. I think they would really like to have your D for several reasons and have offered you a nice package to entice you. You have a D interested in STEM, has great test scores, and did not ask for financial aid.
Good combo to have when applying to a school seeking to increase their test score statistics, and lowering their male to female ratio. They specifically addressed these concerns in the tour we took recently. Those two factors are something the school deems very important. They want to lower the male/female ratio so they can keep attracting smart men who might be turned off by the ratio, and they want to keep providing young women with a great opportunity to enter the STEM fields. They need to up their GPA/SAT?ACT to keep up with schools like NEU who are attracting some top level students that desire to live in an urban setting, study stem, mixed gender ratio, good tech programs etc.
I am not sure how much they feel they need to award a white kid from the burbs seeking no aid, who wants to study entrepreneurship and innovation, and who has mediocre stats compared to some of the STEM kids. So we’ll see. At this point, I think some merit will have to be offered for RPI to be “the one”.
@RightCoaster I’m not exactly sure what they’re doing this year. Last year, I don’t recall receiving a physical acceptance letter, but I believe they may be doing that this year.
@aandaparent Many students pay full price, but it’s because their parents make millions of dollars a year or they come from a foreign country in which case they are not eligible to receive merit or need based aid due to restrictions in that RPI is a national research university receiving certain grants from the federal government. If you can easily afford to pay $70k a year there’s no reason RPI should have to give the student anything, and that’s kind of the policy at basically any university including Ivies and other top tiers. Granted, your parents making that much doesn’t take away from you receiving merit awards if you deserve some. If you didn’t get a merit award and you got in it basically means RPI found you were qualified enough to receive an acceptance letter, but they aren’t super interested in enrolling you.
Granted, this only happens to a very small percentage of admitted students and RPI will not expect a middle or even reasonably upper class person to pay even close to full price. If you have not yet received an award notification, don’t stress - it doesn’t mean anything. I got mine several weeks after my acceptance and still ended up paying close to nothing to attend RPI and enrolled the same day I received my aid notification and my family isn’t exactly ‘poor.’
In terms of the biology program salaries, I think the student you spoke to was over-exaggerating just a bit… The lowest reported salary for a biology graduate in 2015 was $30,000. Granted, this isn’t exactly terrible for a biology program. Our biology program average salary starting with a B.S. is over $40,000 and has been increasing from year to year with some students reporting to make much more. They were correct in stating that a PHD helps a lot. For certain majors, you need a PHD or Masters to make money (aka Biology, Biochemistry, Chemistry) without going directly into the medical field. Please note that RPI offers a five year program for students that get over a 3.0 where you get an MS and a seven year as well for a PHD where they extend your undergraduate aid so you’re paying undergraduate prices for graduate school. Please note that graduate school at most private universities is easily two to five times as much as an undergraduate degree, so it’s really a great deal and something to consider if your child has aspirations of going to graduate school. RPI offers co-terminal for all of its programs, unlike most schools that only do it for engineering.
Compare that to other very reputable schools… Carnegie Mellon’s mean salary for Biology was $30,000 in 2015, which is RPI’s minimum - to give one example. Before making salary judgements, do comparisons when making a decision on whether to enroll between other schools. RPI has the 6th highest median average starting salary out of all college students graduating in the country (check the Economist link below and sort by Median earnings) - higher than Harvey Mudd, UPenn, Princeton, CalTech, and Georgia Tech to name a few.
Sources:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/10/value-university
@joedoe, like I said, sincere high respect for the RPI, its students and graduates. My husband is a nuclear engineer, and that’s the source of my knowledge of RPI. His colleague turned down Cornell for the nuclear engineering at RPI That was 20 years ago, and it wasn’t the money - he would nave qualified for a lot of fin aid.
Good to know about the 7 years PhD. And yes, I know a PhD is a requirement for a science carrier, and as of this moment, in my son’s plans.
Paying $300K to earn $30K per year puzzle stays though. I don’t think many people do that.
RPI or any other school has no way of knowing how easy it would be for a family to give away the EFC, and they probably/hopefully don’t base merit on it. On the other hand, like RightCoaster said, RPI might have no particular interest in another white male going into in our case STEM, even one that is likely in the top 25% of accepted students (based on the 2016 class profile on the RPI site).
Thank you again for the detailed answer! It will be very helpful in making the final choice.
@aandaparent
For my son’s major which is bs in computer engineering
cwru = $61,500 (from 2014)
rpi = $68,820 (from 2015)
the cwru value is from old data, I couldn’t find more recent data.
@aquapt - agreed. For RPI and my D, “getting accepted didn’t feel as welcoming as it might have.”
I also agree that RPI is “marking up” the price of their “product” and then giving many students a “discount”. It bothers me since they aren’t up front about it. Olin does the same thing really, as they give all admitted students a 1/2 tuition scholarship. It just feels different since Olin makes it clear that this is their model. They sell it that way. RPI isn’t so transparent about it…
@fatherofsam It shouldn’t bother you since that’s not how it’s done, and I am sorry you both feel that way. There’s no formula for merit scholarships and it’s based entirely on your application. In addition, to be polite, I have to say that RPI is very much not a product, but a community. They also could care less about enticing any individual to go. They’re trying to build a community more than anything else of individuals that uphold certain things the school is looking for.
Hypothetically, one person didn’t get enough merit aid? Too bad, there’s someone better than the individual that deserved to receive more money. It sounds heartless, but what they care most about, again, is the community and how the individual will interact with the community/contribute. It’s about how much the accepted student can contribute, not what the school can do for the accepted student since the answer to that is quite obvious - it’s the reason the student applied in the first place (or at least should have) That’s what makes RPI more than just a product and most people don’t see that until they attend the school.
I know students that are going to RPI and paying $0 a year and others that pay a lot to go here. It really has to do, again, with the application and many other factors that come into play relating to the application. There’s a reason they’re called “merit” scholarships. There’s a very clear correlation between the strength of your application relative to other applicants that have been admitted and the amount of money you receive. Strength is determined holistically and isn’t always about grades either, or gender, or geographic location. It has to do with what your activities, your personality, interest, etc.
In addition, there are also need based awards for those who qualify. It would be unfair to take an approach similar to Olin by giving everyone a half-tuition scholarship and nothing else since for those who are poor, that’s a lot of money left to pay. For those who are rich, it’s great. So, again, that’s why RPI does merit and need based scholarships, both considered separately - one based on the application and one based on the application as well as financial need. It evens the playing field to allow the greatest amount of accessibility for the students that will contribute most to the school’s community while them attending at the lowest possible cost. We’re not Harvard, so we can’t exactly afford to enroll everyone for free sadly based on an income chart.
The time at which you receive your aid package also does not matter. The committee reviews accepted students for merit aid on a rolling basis as their financial information is finalized, and each student’s information is considered ONLY after their acceptance to ensure fairness in the process. There’s no “marking up” about it, considering many students that are admitted don’t even get scholarship money in some cases.
I know this since the admissions/financial aid office was very transparent when I posed these questions last year and they walked me through the process step by step as I just did now. It makes a great deal of sense, at least, in my opinion after hearing the logic behind it and the methods they use to do everything.
To correct the misperception that Olin awards the half scholarship and nothing else. There is need based financial aid ON TOP of the scholarship for those who are qualified. Not everyone pays the same there.
**Decision: Accepted **
Only got 30k Scholarship. My net price is 40k so won’t be going. A school like RPI should be begging for a national merit finalist like me to be going to their college with a near full ride offer. This is why they only get mediocre students and have mediocre rankings. I’m sorry if I’m offensive.
I applied to these schools:
MIT (Early Decision Deferred then rejected)
RPI (Applied as safety and accepted)
Northeastern (Applied as safety and got admitted to honors program few days ago)
Harvard
Princeton
Columbia
Cornell
Carnegie Mellon
UPenn
Short Biography: I was born in Bangladesh. At age 4, I moved to Japan because of my mother pursuing her PhD in Immunology there. We lived there for 6 years, and in 5th grade I moved to Philadelphia where my mom worked at Upenn. We stayed in Philly for 2 years and then we moved to Baltimore where my mom worked at the NIH. We lived in Baltimore for 3 years from 7th grade to 9th grade. At the end of 9th grade, we moved to Upstate NY. I lived in NY for sophomore year, and then I moved to Gainesville, Florida where my mom worked at UF. I stayed in Florida for junior year, and now as a senior I am back in NY. I am fluent in Bengali, Japanese, English. Highly proficient in French, Spanish, and Arabic.
Prospective major: Electrical Engineering
Objective:
SAT I (superscore): 1520: 770 Math and 750 Writing
ACT (breakdown): no
ACT superscore (breakdown): no
SAT II (subject, score): Japanese - 660; Math 2 - 800; Chemistry - 760.
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 4
Weighted GPA: around 4.5
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): not ranked and class size is 453
AP (place score in parentheses): Chemistry (3), Physics-1 (4), English Composition (4), US History (5)
IB (place score in parentheses): no
Senior Year Course Load: AP Calculus BC, AP English Literature and Composition, AP World History, AP Statistics, AP Physics C Mechanics, Computer Science 1, Economics Honors
Major Awards (USAMO, Intel, etc.): National Spanish Exam Bronze Award, National Youth leadership forum in Engineering and Technology Distinguished Alumni
Common Awards (AP Scholar, honor roll, NM things, etc.): AP Scholar with Honor, National Merit Finalist, honor roll all four years, Academic achievement award (top 10% of class by Unweighted GPA at end of junior year)
Subjective:
Extracurriculars (name, grade levels, leadership, description):
Hobbies and activities:
Job/Work Experience: Survey taker at a Market Research Firm
Volunteer/Community Service:
Writing (Subject, 1-10 rating, details):
Essays:
Not going to talk much about these. I found they were pretty good and reflected my personality.
Teacher Recommendation #1: Did not read.
Teacher Recommendation #2: Did not read.
Counselor Rec: Did not read.
Additional Info/Rec: Did not read.
Interview: They all went very well
Art Supplement: no
Other
Date Submitted App: 12/30/2016
U.S. State/Territory or Country: NY
School Type: Public
Ethnicity: Bangladeshi
Gender: Male
Income Bracket Range: 60k
Hooks (URM, first generation, recruited athlete, development): URM maybe??
Reflection
Strengths: Now I don’t really think I ever had any. I guess I had some good looking academics going for me, and I am a National Merit finalist. I also know 6 languages.
Weaknesses: I feel like I am mediocre. I haven’t won Intel or won a major award. I feel like students going to top schools excel at a particular field and put a lot of time and effort in that passion like research in Molecular biology, competing in US Math Olympiad team, etc
What would you have done differently?: I don’t really know
Wow!!! You had me at Hello.
Would you please kindly decline your RPI acceptance ASAP so that your seat and money may go to someone who is next in line on the waiting list?
@joedoe Hi I was just wondering something and since you seem really familiar with RPI I figured I’d ask you. I received the medalist scholarship for 25k but I also received a very large grant that brought my EFC a few thousand below what my family could pay (already a very low number to begin with). So it this grant solely based on need or can they offer larger ones to high stats students?
Does anyone know if an applicant who received the Rensselaer Medal can still qualify for additional merit scholarships? Or if someone is a Medalist, are they not considered for additional scholarships?
38 is not a mediocre ranking and just because you were a national merit finalist doesn’t mean applicants couldn’t have had better ECs, grades, or SAT scores than you.
@MoronicAcid17 based on what I’ve seen in this thread the highest scholarship offered was 30k and the medalist scholarship was 25k. I think you’re only eligible for grants.
Wow!!! You had me at Hello @tawhidkhn62
Would you kindly decline your RPI acceptance ASAP so that your seat and money may go to the next person in line on the waiting list?
^^^^^
What @psfk2417 said. Politely decline and free up your space and $$ for kids that want to attend.
And yes, your entitlement is offensive. .
@a20171 look back there are scholarships higher than $30,000 my child received over 40,000/year & we appealed for more & got free forming so yes always ask