@collegemom777 I agree with you it’s hard to tell what you’ll get. Of the 15 schools my kids have applied to including public in state universities RPI was the cheapest. My second kid was accepted early decision and is covered more than tuition and fees and partially room&board so when he moves out of his room&board he will be full paid. It may have something to do with siblings attending together but even my first kid got just room&board plus a little more.
I think it’s more to do with demonstrating desire to attend and academic to Major eligibility. RPI will always generate a willing 20,000 student waitlist, most willing to wait. So getting high payers is in their favor to easily get. But demonstrating desire to attend is where the gold is for them. They have funds set exclusively for aid so giving it to just anyone applying gets them no wins in the deal. But giving it to the ones they want to secure really ensures a win for both parties. That method increases retention rate which is a goal for all colleges for many reasons. There are plenty of rich families that are academically capable of attending and then drop or transfer out. I know first hand of one family that had a genius kid attend two years ago and paid almost full price but dropped out after the first semester to become a Twitch gamer. It’s my opinion that the key to high aid is not only demonstrated need but also fervent desire.
“RPI will always generate a 20,000 student waitlist, most willing to wait”, like what? RPI for the first time last year had 20,000 students even apply, with half of those kids applying to RPI as a backup school. @reformedman this isn’t MIT.
No question RPI is an expensive school, but on par with other similar NE tech / engineering schools. 3 years from now I will have a better idea if financially it was a good decision. My son is a freshman in engineering and loves it. As far as assistance, with two kids and over 20 schools applied to merit etc.varies. Cappex calculator on target 80% of the time with both upside and downside surprises. It was dead on for RPI, at least for us. In NYS the SUNY schools are by far best value. Oh … and they give merit $s too. With both in private institutions I will say that you get a lot for your money and rarely have to buck up for things you would expect are included. SUNYs tend to have additional fees and cost. ps … this school is serious business academically. those who maybe breezed through HS best be ready to do the work. Virtually everyone who goes was an A student, honor society, APs, and high SATs. For balance I will say the winters are tough, and the male/female ratio has not been addressed. Also, I’m not so sure if the Arch is a good or bad thing. Jury is out on that.
I think we are mixing up two kinds of aid together. Need-based aid is almost always based totally on family finances. Some schools may weigh certain parts of that (home equity, retirement funds, retirement contributions, other investments) more than others, but generally schools do not include student qualifications, including GPA and interest, in those calculations.
Merit aid tends to be more subjective. It’s entirely possible that schools, including RPI, use that as a carrot for students they find particularly desirable, whether because of academic qualifications, special talents, perceived likelihood of attending, etc.
There are also schools who will simply reject or waitlist students if they don’t demonstrate a lot of interest, regardless of how impressive their grades might be, in favor of accepting students who make it very clear they want to come. Yield protection.
Agree. I was not clear. I was referring in my case to merit based. Needs was/is limited to the basic stafford loans. With that said I stand by using Cappex forecast as it uses income in its logic.
@spqr70nj Rutgers was full pay, no aid at all for us. Pennstate was about $2k in aid. Like I said, RPI was near full tuition covered and we only had to pay room/board plus a bit more for our first kid. And for our second kid full tuition is covered as well as half the room/board. I’m delighted they care both in RPI with a great cost of attendance. We live in NJ and made it clear that it was our first choice school with all the visits, emails and calls as well as his essays.
@randomdude532 correction, I meant 20,000 applicants. Really only about 2-3k go on the wait list which is in itself quite substantial when you think only about 10 or 20 will get off the waitlist. Point still remains that they have more people to draw from the waitlist which works perfectly for them so they’re not worried.
How ever did the admission process get so perverter? Think about purchasing something and never knowing if they will sell it to you or how much it will cost. Think about the student who applies early decision, gets deferred to regular decision, and gets waitlisted how much stress that causes over 5 or 6 months. Think about being fully qualified for your dream school and not getting accepted and never knowing why? It seems like schools try to maximize prestige and profits at the expense of student applicants.
Great point BagODonets, This has all become an obscene business from testing to application to acceptance to books etc. The current issue as you describe I believe is driven by the ease of the common app (and my kids applied to 10+ per). I think I read in the UK you are limited to applying to 5 schools. Basic economics as that number goes up, more customers chasing limited supply. That one change would start to get things back on track. Next up would be the student loan system. Like an increasing money supply, loan availability drive educations inflation. I won’t bore you all with the rest. I’m sure these are not unfamiliar ideas to you. With that said, as I posted before, we are very happy with our choices to date. Hopefully that remains true 5, 10, 20 years from now.
Yes, the system is a mess. I have 2 in college, and they are happy and doing well. They made good choices, but neither is at their “dream school” despite both getting in, because of financial aid. The process was incredibly stressful, and we learned all sorts of things we didn’t know. Many schools waitlist more kids than they admit, and some years no one makes it off the waitlist (because they always overenroll anyway). So being on a waitlist is really false hope most of the time. Some schools are highly unlikely to admit you if you haven’t visited. The way HSs weight and convert their grades can make a big difference for their students. And some HS students claim to have done more in the last 4 years than most people have done in a lifetime. I have also realized that if you are upper middle class - somewhere just beyond the range where financial aid is offered, your best choice is to send your child to a state school. If you are middle to lower-middle class, you are likely to get a better deal from a “meets 100% need” private school than from a state school. Which is the opposite of what I would have thought (and doesn’t really seem fair, either). In the home stretch now for S19, with the last few decisions coming in the next few weeks. I will be happy to be finished with it.
Current graduating RPI student here. RPI is pretty fair with its scholarships and aid programs. I’ve gotten the same merit and need-based aid from RPI every year. The only thing that will vary (at any school) is state and federal aid since that’s out of the school’s control.
RPI does not count co-op earnings either towards aid or scholarships, nor do they count your first home. All large merit (Rensselaer Medalist or Leadership Award) or large-need based (Rensselaer Grant) awards are renewable every year. The GPA requirement to maintain the awards is a 2.0 (they’ll put you on probation for a semester if you dip below that, but you retain the award). They will only reduce your NEED-BASED (not merit - that never changes) award if there is a significant increase in income (10-20% change) in which case you will be notified and you can appeal. It’s also not 1:1, they’ll just cut a little off. They may also increase your need based award if you have a significant drop in income.
You don’t need to pay the school back for any scholarships, grants, or awards. They’re free money. RPI also usually gives a lot, so that $71k price tag will likely be a lot lower if you’re from the US or Canada (only countries RPI gives awards to). I only paid like $15k a year for everything, which is not bad. My parents also make below six figures so I’m relatively middle class compared to most of the school. I’d make $7k a year from working and use loans and parent help to pay the rest. Most students also do a co-op which will give you enough money to pay an entire academic year off in cash if you get a good deal, especially if you’re in a high-paying group like CS, IT, or engineering.
I wouldn’t want to work in an admissions or FA office in any college/university, they are making literally thousands of decisions, to admit/not-admit, and how much if any aid to offer. They get between 5 and 20X more applicants depending upon the school than they have space to admit. And of those applicants, the large portion at most competitive schools are “qualified” as in they would like be able to succeed at getting through if they were admitted and enrolled. And to top it off, they have to do this work with limited staff and get most of it done in a couple of months.
As for RPI, they actually are pretty generous in merit aid for applicants that are well above the average applicant. If you are at/near average in their applicant pool, it probably will be an expensive option but if you are well above the typical applicant they are usually quite generous as they have to be since those students probably have acceptances at other prestigious places. They have to price themselves down when competing for those students to have a chance at them.
@joedoe thanks for the information on the financial aid. It’s nice to get feedback from someone in the “inside”. S will find out Saturday if he is in, snd hopefully the financial aid will be generous for him.
@lakergirl6232 I got it as well, but I doubt it means anything. Maybe they sent it to those who hadn’t logged into the portal in a while - hence why one twin may have got it and not the other.
@joedoe thanks for the info. I do not know why RPI does not make this more public. I have seen a lot of financial aid policies which can best be described as scams. The 2.0 and probation term is a compassionate policy that allows people to budget.
@Spark2018 While I agree kids should apply to only 5 or 6 schools they defiantly would attend I am not sure schools think this is an issue. If RPI gets 20,000 applicants at $70 each that is a quick $1,400,000 for them.
@atxfather to me this is why no one likes car sales people. The sticker price is never the price. Also why no one likes likes airline pricing. Why should I pay twice as much as the person sitting next to me for the same product. Your home is a similar large size purchase to a college education. What if you were charged based on how much you could afford rather than the value of the home?
@BadODonuts – The problem with the analogy of college cost vs an airline seat or a car dealer only holds if you decide that you don’t care to make college affordable for kids with low incomes. For an airline seat, you pick a different time or route or decide you don’t really need to travel. For a car, you decide you don’t really need the fancy new car and buy a klunker. If colleges had a no-haggle list price and charged everyone exactly the same amount then it would price out a huge number of people (or make them pick the klunker that they could afford). If you allow any kind of FA (merit, need, athletic, etc) then you have opened up the can of worms where the sticker price is no longer a no-haggle value and only the well off would be able to afford an education.
On your other comment on the application fee. I don’t begrudge the colleges the $70 or so per application. If they spend an average of 2 person-hours reviewing each one that’s $35/hour which is dirt cheap for a fully burdened labor cost. So I don’t think most places see the application fee as huge money maker but more of a cost recovery and minimum check on interest to weed out kids that don’t really want to attend.