<p>My S was award the RIT Computing Medal at the end of Junior year. He is interested in RIT but I don't think that at this point it is his top choice. The question is, when he is listing awards on the Common App (or other applications) should he list this award? Even though it is only directly applicable at RIT, it was an honor to be selected for it, of course.</p>
<p>Also, looking at RIT's scholarships page, he'll automatically qualify for a higher scholarship based on his test scores and class rank, and he has a pretty good chance of being a National Merit Finalist too. But those higher merit scholarships give a range of possible values (based on merit). You can only have one merit scholarship at RIT. Does anyone know if his having won the computing medal will help bump him up a little higher in the range than maybe his scores alone would have done?</p>
<p>I thought so too at first, but I see a lot of posts advising people that the RPI medal (fairly similar I think in selectiveness) would not be of interest to other schools. The recipient of this award, like the RPI medal, is not selected by RIT but by the participating high school.</p>
<p>Does RIT offer merit aid for whoever wins the medal? </p>
<p>I remember that a college counselor at Carnegie Mellon said that they would match merit aid a student is offered from schools like RPI. I’m not sure if the same is true for the RIT medal, but it is worth looking into. </p>
<p>As for listing the medal- I would assume that it is the equivalent of the school’s prize for the best student in computer science. I would list it and detail who is eligible for the award at your school.</p>
<p>Yes, there is merit scholarship ($6K/year) that goes along with the award. </p>
<p>That’s interesting about CMU offering to match merit aid. If true, that could be very worthwhile as my son will definitely qualify for decent merit aid at both RPI and RIT.</p>
<p>You are correct, it is basically an award for the top computing student in the school, as of the end of Junior year.</p>
<p>He has visited RIT, and definitely liked it. He’s interested in their game design program, and their co-op program. I don’t know what his top choice is right now. Other schools that are high on his list are RPI, WPI, CMU, MIT, and Drexel. We haven’t visited CMU or Drexel yet. It may all come down to the finaid packages, because he has a lot of things he really likes about all of these.</p>