<p>My son is interested in computer science. Has gotten in Rose Hulman, Penn State, Florida Tech, RIT. Sitll waiting on Carnegie Mellon, which may not happen.</p>
<p>We have not seen Rose Hulman and have no idea how much financial aid to expect. Anyone have any ideas of that , and also Rose compared to these others? He seems to be leaning to RIT, but i think that's mainly because of a good merit schlorship.
Thanks</p>
<p>I would rank those options like this (for CS):</p>
<ol>
<li>CMU (if it works out)</li>
<li>Penn State</li>
<li>Rose Hulman</li>
<li>RIT</li>
<li>FL Tech</li>
</ol>
<p>Given the complete lack of method in ranking things such as this, I would agree with noimagination except I would flip Penn State and Rose so that it looks like:</p>
<ol>
<li>CMU</li>
<li>Rose-Hulman</li>
<li>Penn State</li>
<li>RIT</li>
<li>FL Tech</li>
</ol>
<p>Don’t expect too much aid from RHIT. Remember, it is a very small private school. Yes, you’ll get lots of aid, but it won’t be enough. Nice place, but not much of a town nearby. Still, it is only a 45 minute drive to Indianapolis airport. Although he didn’t apply there, it is probably a better deal than Case Western even with all their financial aid which is great but not anywhere near enough. If he can get into CMU, then go there. But if aid is a concern, RHIT might be out of the running, so go with Penn or …</p>
<p>thanks so much–I will show this to my son, who as I said is leaning toward RIT. I spoke to financial aid at Rose yesterday and they said packages would be mailed the first week of March, so we will wait to visit until we get it- no sense falling in love with a school we can’t afford.</p>
<p>I don’t know if any of these schools negotiate. </p>
<p>Thanks again.</p>
<p>I visited Penn state yesterday. I really liked the atmosphere the people were happy and friendly. There’s a club for pretty much anything. You can make the school as big or small as you want. The campus is big and the college town is there because of the school so they were friendly.</p>
<p>They are big on research and a lot of the big name companies sponsor classes on campus. I was talking to a ME senior there and she took a class sponsored by Boeing. The class got you familier with designing, and shows you stresses and falls on certain things and other stuff and Boeing gave her a job at the career fair because of it.</p>
<p>Penn state is a place where it becomes what you make of it.</p>
<p>cabhax, I don’t think it’s really correct that big companies “sponsor classes”. They certainly recruit and hire coop students at PSU and perhaps there is collaboration on some projects.</p>
<p>^ I think cabhax meant that in her senior project class, her project was sponsored by boeing.</p>
<p>Here we are a couple months later–still trying to figure it all out. Penn State offered almost no FA–so sad to say they are out. Florida was not much better, but they were kind of out anyway. RIT offered a pretty good package. He really likes Rose —we are just trying to re-arrange our lives so that we can buy groceries once in a while if he goes there. It may end up being RIT–which he does like quite a bit.</p>
<p>My son got in to Rose hullman too for EE. But we are almost ready to go elsewhere. He did get 8K scholarship for the first year only, but considering out of state tuition is about 50K it is still too expensive and then there is always the chance he will not get anything from the second year onwards. We will probably stay in state in CA.</p>
<p>^RHIT is private, so in/out of state should not matter either way for tuition amounts.</p>
<p>"1. CMU
2. Rose-Hulman
3. Penn State
4. RIT
5. FL Tech "</p>
<p>^ agree.</p>
<p>I would caution you that the important thing is that the program - curriculum, extracurriculars, cocurriculars, etc. - is compatible with your child’s interests. All the rankings in the world can say A is better than B, but if you’re thinking about studying Formal Languages and nobody teaches it or researchers it at A and it’s one of the thing B’s best at, it would be a tragic waste to go to A instead of B.</p>
<p>Your son should go where he feels most comfortable. Rose-Hulman actually gave me a pretty good deal (it would have been less than 10K for tuition and 20K a year including room and board). Ultimately though it wasn’t enough to override my other deal ($8,500 a year with room and board already included). Personally, I would just go with the cheapest option so that you will have the least amount of debt upon graduation especially if your son plans to go to graduate school (but if he doesn’t then this might not be the case). Rose-Hulman likes to boast their basically 100% job placement after graduation, so if he is not planning on grad school this may be something to keep in mind. Otherwise, your undergrad school really doesn’t matter nearly as much as your graduate school. Good luck!</p>
<p>greenfield, all your son would have had to do is maintain at least a 2.0 GPA to keep his scholarship from year to year. Rose-Hulman would not have taken it away–only he could do that.</p>
<p>Best of luck to your son wherever he attends in CA.</p>
<p>Jared Goulding</p>