If you get nominated for the medal, what are the full steps to fully acquiring the medal and the scholarship associated with it?
Do you have to apply ED to RPI to get the medal?
Can you get other scholarships/grants on top of this one?
How much does the medal ACTUALLY help in the admissions process? Do you automatically have an advantage when applying?
Thanks!
“Each participating high school is allowed to select one member of the junior class to be honored with the Rensselaer Medal Award. To receive the Medal Scholarship, students must apply, be accepted, and enroll at Rensselaer. The official Rensselaer Medal will be presented during Honors Convocation in the fall of the first year at Rensselaer. The responsibility for designating the Rensselaer Medalist belongs to faculty and staff within the secondary school.”
http://admissions.rpi.edu/undergraduate/admission/freshman/rpimedal.html
Apply regular admission. Yes, you are able to receive other scholarships/grants above the $25,000 medal scholarship. It is the highest honor. No indication as to how it helps with admission but logically, the medal recipient is deemed to be the best math/science student in the junior class of that school.
I forgot to mention one more thing. When adding all your scholarships/merits, you can go as high as full tuition but not more than that. In other words, you will not have your dormitory covered by those scholarships/merits.
Thank you!!! Can you give a list of the additional scholarships/merits and their requirements?
@TheHills79 - They do have other scholarships and grants and award them based on your application to the school as part of the financial aid process. No separate application needed. Check the website for other details. http://admissions.rpi.edu/aid/scholarships.html
@TheHills79
Just to give you an idea using mine as a sample I got both the Rensselaer Leadership Award and the Rensselaer Grant.
The Leadership Award varies in amount as well as the Rensselaer Grant amount and I can’t disclose each amount for specificity sake, but when I add both it comes out to 43k.
So imagine if I would have gotten the Medal Award, I would have been set.
If you get the Medal, you’d be set. Give it your best shot to try to get it.
A little bit of misinformation here.
The medal award is for $25,000. It cannot be combined with any other merit award (grants are not merit awards they are grants) so if you receive the medal award but your leadership award comes in higher you get the leadership award amount only
PLEASE NOTE: If a student earns multiple Rensselaer merit scholarships, the university will award the highest merit award for which the student is qualified, but does not combine multiple awards. Total Rensselaer provided scholarships and/or tuition benefits may not exceed tuition
Now I have heard of cases where combined awards reached full tuition and additional scholarships were given specifically for free dorming &/or free laptops
Full information about the medal award can be found here
http://admissions.rpi.edu/undergraduate/admission/freshman/rpimedal.html
How do most schools select the kid to award the medal to?
My son is considering RPI. He is a sophomore and has very good grades in math and science, inviolved with math team and robotics. I doubt he is the top performer though, but he might be the only kid really interested in RPI as a legit school choice.
Should he tell his GC next year that he is interested in attending RPI?
Yes, tell the GC. Also, check the information on the website about the medal to see if your school is currently listed as a participating school. (There is a search box.) If they are not, now is a good time to for the GC to get the schools signed up. They may not be aware of this valuable award and scholarship.
Thanks, our school is on the list already. My son is going there this summer for an engineering camp and for a mens soccer prospect day. RPI is a top contender for him, and receiving the Medal would be a nice bonus.
The medal is nice to have on your back pocket but don’t stress if you don’t get it. My child got a much higher leadership award than the medal would’ve given.
Let them know you’re interested. Be diverse in your activities & keep all your grades up & you’ll do fine.
Thanks all for the help!
The medal is awesome! It’s good to know you already have half-tuition at a solid school. (And a very likely acceptance)
The medal is great, but even if you don’t get it you can still get just as much or more money from RPI simply by applying. Submitting an application and being admitted automatically puts you in the pool for merit scholarships and grants. These are based on financial need, the quality of your essay, your academics, and your activities. If you’re poor/middle class (50-80k familial income) or from an underrepresented group in your given field of study, you’ll likely receive a very generous package. I know several students that go to RPI at no cost, including food, books, laptop, and dorm included - but their families net 30k or less. Granted, my family income is around 90k and so is my friend’s and we are both practically only paying room and board. I know people that pay more or less than me with similar incomes, it really has to do with the quality of the student and their performance in high school or on standardized tests.
If your family is wealthy, you typically need to be “that much better” in order to get a generous package since once your income passes a certain amount, RPI can give you a small award and still be more competitive in terms of dollars awarded than equally or more prestigious universities (e.g. after a certain income bracket at Ivy Leagues you need to pay full price, while at RPI you’d probably only pay half tuition).
I can assure you the income guidelines above are quite false.
Merit scholarships are need blind
Yes, merit scholarships are need blind, but we found also Rensselaer to be generous with grants.
@Slydog The beginning of joedoe’s message spoke about merit and then he spoke of both merit AND grants. And then he explained what grants were and how they are related to need. Therefore he is correct.
He wasn’t saying that merit are based on need, he was saying that grants (institutional award grants) are based on need.
@TQfromtheU Glad they were generous with you, they were very generous with me too. And such a great school, I’m real grateful to them.
@GoRedhead you’re kinda scaring me if that’s what you read perhaps you’d like to go back & reread most especially where all the income guidelines came in & the last paragraph especially that states if you’re wealthy it’s hard to get a “good package” if you’re a good candidate your package will be good regardless of income.