Virginia Tech Class of 2025 — Decision Release Date: Mar 1-15

Colleges and Universities A-Z Virginia Tech
848

one would have to think that needs plays a big part … and its the theoretical carrot … Schools are under significant financial crunches right now. VT doesn’t have the same endowment as a UVA or UNC.

It’s a win/win.
VT charges an extra $15-20K in tuition for OOS. Throw some kids a $5000 scholarship as a bone … and they’re still netting $10-15K MORE than they’d get from an IS student.

Not saying this is the primary or the only consideration when giving merit – but we’d be fools to believe that it’s not part of the equation.

My S was offered a $600 VT grant … that’s it. I’m not complaining but his stats are on par with others in his program. Not that it matters with VT (or so they say) … but FAFSA stats put nearly everything on me. I’d imagine that VT tries to close the gap and gives out some $$$ for true merit – but I’d have to think that financial need is the biggest determining factor…which would be fine if there were a larger in-statue contingent. No offense to any of you out-of-staters … but I made it known that going out of state wasn’t an option for them - unless they wanted to pick up the cost themselves.

849

Hoping doesn’t necessarily mean expecting. If I were to buy a lottery ticket I would not expect to win but quite obviously I would still hope to win, otherwise why would I buy it. And if there is a convenience store that has sold the winning ticket more than average then it makes sense for me to buy it there over other stores. In this case, the CDS indicates the average non-need based aid (excluding athletic aid) is just over $3K, and the middle 50 for the last Virginia Tech class was an ACT of 25-31 (Math 24-30 / English 24-32). Thus an applicant (yes, doing their research) whom is well above that 75th percentile profile certainly has good reason to hope to receive an above average merit award, to the order of the $10K poster above. While my D21 received exactly what we expected, it was still less than we hoped, but as a double alumni family with an emotional component to that hope it was a $60 lottery ticket we were willing to buy.

That said, its also disingenuous to simply say they don’t give a lot of merit because they don’t need to due to the many great applicants. The 30% OOS students (which includes recruited athletes) come from primarily 5 states: MD, NJ, NC, PA, NY. This includes states with the highest tuition costs, where OOS tuition at Virginia Tech is parity or even less than staying in-state. In fact PA and NY are also the only two states whose average in-state tuition is actually higher than their out of state tuition. So no they don’t need to offer merit unless they want to expand their geographic diversity, but that is only because they have enough applicants for which VT’s OOS tuition is actually a better value than staying in-state.

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850

This is a fantastic post, and I entirely agree.

It does irk me a little when people start to post about how VT is so amazing with so many great applicants that they don’t even need to care about any of them (i.e. merit). It’s not really true, and this is surely partially budget driven. If they could offer more merit, they would, and they would attract better students from OOS, and this would help drive up their prestige and rankings, which would also eventually bring in better IS students as well.

Having said that, VT is a very good school. Interestingly, Niche has it ranked much higher than US News. In my experience, US News seems to be their rankings more heavily on how hard they are to get into (SATs and acceptance rates), as well as their “prestige”. Niche tends to give more weight to things like campus food, campus culture, campus facilities/safety, and value for your dollar. Niche has VT as the 12th ranked public university, but US News much further down. As parents, we tend to agree more with Niche (looking at the total package, teachers, campus experience, and value) more so than just the university’s prestige among employers and pure difficulty getting accepted.

But back to the original point, if VT wanted to rise in the rankings and move from the current level closer up to the Georgia Tech / Wisconsin level, or even further up toward UNC, UVA, U Mich, they would need to offer more money to OOS kids who are getting into those schools. They don’t need to and are doing just fine, but there is room to if they could.

Lastly, the lottery ticket is exactly right. My daughter was also in the top 25% of VT’s posted “stats” (although by no means in the top 5%), and so like you said, for $60, we thought that was well worth it. With the merit offered, it’s still in the running. The net price is not best we have thus far, but it’s in the top half.

851

VT could play the merit game like other states to try to improve their ranking but that just doesn’t seem to be a priority. And, as a VA tax payer I support using the funds they do have to go towards need as much as it can, and to keep to a lower OOS % and low in-state cost. It does ultimately come down to whether or not they need to offer merit to attract the students they want (the only reason colleges offer merit aid) and, at the moment, they don’t have a problem with that. I see it as similar to the UCs, which give zero aid to OOS students. I’m from CA and all my family is there. S21 wanted to apply to some UCs but they’d be $60k with not even any lottery-ticket hope of a merit award so he didn’t bother.

852

OOS seems to be over $40,000. There are also extra fees for some programs like engineering. Are you saying that is the same or less than the cost of staying instate in many other states? That is surprising to me .

853

There are some schools in my state that list the full COA over 38K so with small merit they could be close.

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854

Yes, states really vary. For instance my home state it’s about 32k for in state. VT out of state is 42. If you got 5-10 in merit, which is possible, they are essentially comparable. And my kids all want to get out of the state if they can for college to experience something new and different.

SUNY Binghamton, also a top rated school, is only 25 tuition for out of state. Room and board for Binghamton is listed as 15k but if you live off campus you pay half of that, so it comes in around 35, and with merit it came in as cheaper than in state. This is why my oldest chose Binghamton. A+ education out of state for in state costs.

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855

Agree and that makes sense on UC. We love many of their schools but as an OOS no point in even applying since we’re not able to just throw 30k per year extra just to be in a UC school.

As another poster said, they got 10k merit as an OOS. That would make VT cheaper than our in state option. My kids would prefer to borrow an extra 5k per year if it allowed them to have an out of state experience. Connecticut is a very small state, and although it has premium k-12 public education, there isn’t a lot going on in terms of good weather or things to do, so the kids want to venture out :slight_smile:

856

I don’t think that’s true about NY & NC being being more expensive in-state than VT’s OOS (I assume we’re comparing rack-rates of publics)

NY’s SUNY in-state + R/B (looking at Stony Brook) is approx $20,000
NC’s UNC in-state + R/B (looking at UNC-CH) is approx $23,000
NC’s Appalachian State comes in at around $18,000

VT OOS is approx $42,000. Even with a 3k merit award it doesn’t touch in-state for NY & NC.

There are some southern colleges (U of SC, UK, UTK, FSU, UGA) that are very generous to out of state kids with high stats, which can make it cheaper to attend OOS than IS.

I’m sure most applicants have one, two or more “lottery ticket” scenarios on their list. Great if you get something, but not surprised if you don’t get anything. If the numbers don’t work out, you have to know when to walk away.

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857

I’m not sure about UGA. Mine has 4.0 UW, 10 APs, 35 ACT, lots of leadership and ECs…auto admit to Georgia honors but no merit. (Also no merit in-state for Virginia Tech, but we weren’t too surprised.)

858

UGA may have lower numbers of students who are awarded scholarships, but they’re available. A couple of our students this year have received the Classic scholarship.

859

I wasn’t suggesting they never give scholarships, but I don’t know that they are in the group of schools who are known for good merit (like South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, etc.).

860

My reference to NC was about it being in the top 5 for where Virginia Tech students come from, not the cost piece. NC is a an athletic recruiting hotbed for Tech and athletic aid (which the CDS reports averages $27K/athlete…obviously per NCAA guidelines some sports are headcount sports and and some equivalency sports) as stated is not included in the non-need based aid metric.

The cost piece was geared to a few other states on that list and came from this graphic however its based on averages so I would not expect it to hold true across every school. I’m also willing to concede that I could have interpreted it incorrectly, it was late, but if you read the boards enough the sense that PA and NY kids (and even NJ) routinely go out of state because its a better value is a common theme so I think may still be some truth to it. Either way I stand by the sentiment that the reasons they don’t offer merit are not what is lackadaisically touted as the “don’t let the door hit you in the rear” mindset.

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861

Yes, I would tend to agree with you that perhaps UGA is not in the “very generous” category that the other schools are. They’ve been slowly creeping up over the years in OOS selectivity (and have seen more high-stat applicants) so I’m guessing that their generosity in OOS merit will adjust accordingly.

They seemed to be more generous when my daughter applied OOS in 2013 (with lower stats). She also didn’t receive an award until mid-April (had already decided to go elsewhere), so there may still be a chance for your kid to see something. I believe I read on their admissions blog that they hand out awards well into April, once they see how the admissions numbers are looking.

862

Gotcha. I do agree that a lot of NY & NJ kids decide to come south for college (although part of that may be wanting a change in climate, or because families intend to follow their kids and relocate to the south, where the cost of living is significantly less than metropolitan areas of NY & NJ.)

863

My PA Daughters did not want to go to school instate. So I basically told them they can go anywhere that the cost would essentially be the same or close to the PSU 35K or so in state cost. My oldest went to Clemson with a 15K per year award that evened out the cost. My younger one was accepted to VT no merit, Maryland 8K per year, Clemson merit TBD, UDel 17K merit, Bama 28K merit, Wisconsin no merit and Miami of Ohio 36K merit. Because she wants either medical school or nurse Practioner school she is choosing Miami.

And btw when applying she knew that unless she hit the lottery with some crazy scholarship, Maryland, Wisconsin or VT would probably not be in play. No bitterness or gnashing of teeth about the lack of merit at those schools. Knew the deal going in.

She loved VT but the full OSS tuition made it not a financially viable choice. Good luck to all the new Hokies…

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864

The lack of consistency across schools is so interesting. By contrast, my S got no aid at Clemson, 10k at UDel, 12.5k at UMD, 3k at VT, 22.5k+ at U of SC. So many variables and different eyes on the same applications draw different conclusions.

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865

Well said, and that is largely the double-edged sword that is the United States. We are really more like many different individual countries. Looking at the chart above, Vermont for example is one of the most expensive, and as a result they are very reliant upon wealthy ski families. Our oldest a few years ago we accepted to 10+ schools, everyone gave merit, except for UVM (which was the lowest ranking school on her list), which gave her nothing. Currently that would be close to 60K per year for an OOS student. Udel/Penn State/Umass were much cheaper with some merit, and she chose SUNY Binghamton, which is a superior school in all aspects other than parties and ski options. Binghamton with merit was something like 31 at the time (versus UVM for 56 back then).

Each state is entirely different when it comes to education, more like 50 small countries with no passport required to travel between.

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866

when should we receive our packets?

867

financial aid awards were prepared and ready when the student was admitted.
any merit awards that WILL be included should already be included.
what you see is what you will get - and that isn’t going to change, save some of the scholarships that your S may be in the running for. based on other comments, you would already know about these.

– unless i’m missing something.