@jmk518 Thank you, this helps a lot.
@Jplytc72 - you are going to ask for MORE merit aid? is that possible?
Merit aid is usually awarded by the admissions office, and need based financial aid by the FA office. You can contact either office and find out where you stand. The admissions office probably doesn’t know if you qualify for FA and it is looking at your application to try to get you the highest award. Did you submit all scores, updated grades, any awards?
If you have financial need, go to the FA office and plead your case.
@twoinanddone I have submitted all scores and I did apply for financial aid, so I’ll wait until I get my FA offer to ask for more, if need be.
Our FA package was received this evening. Very unimpressed. Way above both our EFC and the NPC. WPI is not feasible for us. Now if my son was a girl, apparently that would be a different story :-/
@greatmom23 I hear you! WPI was my sons first choice school is now demoted to a backup plan if he doesn’t get into a competitive program at the state university…and/or his other school choices might be more appealing if the funds are more generous. We are so disappointed… time to move on.
Son got accepted to WPI with $33.5K a year Merit scholarship. Our EFC is supposed to be $500. We just got our FA package leaving us in the hole for $20K a year, not counting two loans a year my son would have to get into. Awful 
He was crushed as this was one of his top choice schools - and up to tonight was his top choice from schools he’s been accepted so far. Now all our eggs will have to be in the RD basket, and hope for a good FA package from BC.
Im really saddened by your comment. Thank you for clarifying though. I’m sure now that’s why my daughter got in with a good scholarship. I’ll let her know her gender had everything to do with it. Her grades, scores, tremendous outside extra curricular activities, theatre, music and two varsity sports were just a waste.
@newenglandmom1
I suspect " her grades, scores, tremendous outside extra curricular activities, theatre, music and two varsity sports" had a great deal to do with it.
Why is it that in our culture we need to bring others/other’s accomplisnments down to feel better about ourselves/our accomplishments? I am sure everyone that was admitted was merited. I don’t see any weak stats posted on this site. How WPI decides to incentivize students to come to their school (merit aid) is a BUSINESS decision. I believe that they have studied the needs of the schools based on their objectives and are prepared to offer incentives accordingly. It’s like buying a house. I don’t have a need for a pool, so even though putting a pool in is expensive and should drive the price of a house up, I would probably not be willing to pay extra for that amenity because I don’t have that need (others might feel differently about it). However, because I still have small children, I would be willing to pay a premium for a house located near their school. While some might think that this crazy, it would be addressing my need to cut down on travel time (multiple times a day).
All this to say: congratulations to all that have been accepted. I hope everyone will make their own best choice regarding where they decide to go.
For WPI, US NEWS reports with last year’s data indicates that, ON AVERAGE, 81% of demonstrated financial need of matriculating are met and that 46.8% of matriculating students have 100% of their demonstrated financial need met. In addition, starting with this year’s class, all matriculating students will be able to participant in the off campus project centers with a $5,000 credit toward the estimated $5,000 cost. Almost 75% of the students who matriculated at WPI demonstrated financial need. This data should put to rest concerns about being rejected because of financial need. The demand is high and the budget is limited. I have always argued that acceptance of otherwise highly qualified students without the financial resources is a better option for applicants than a polite rejection.
The US news data on Boston College for last year indicates that only 45% of the matriculating students applied for FA. One hundred percent of these matriculating students had their demonstrated financial need fully met.
If accepted to BC, there should be no problem with FA. The demonstrated need of their students is lower and they can meet all the demonstrated need of accepted students. The financial resources of their applicants is higher and their endowment is higher ($2.1 billion + vs WPI’s $466.3 million +).
STEM schools are more in demand than ever before, but they still have a large cohort of first generation college applicants. MIT meets demonstrated need but also has a $13.2 billion endowment. STEM faculty and laboratories are very expensive.
As difficult as it sounds, colleges should never reject the better qualified student because they could not afford them.
:bz
Im assuming you are referring to my comment. I was referencing the stats put forth on the acceptance thread, clearly they are looking to even out their ratios of male:female and the girls were receiving significantly more merit money. Im sure your daughter was well deserving of her award. My son is top 20 in his class of over 300, a 3 season varsity athlete all 4 years, works 15hours/week, volunteers and is an active member of his religious youth group and a SAT score of 1480 but wasn’t afforded the nearly the same as girls with lesser achievements. Its a private school and they are free to spend their money how they want, it just sucks.
@greatmom23 I have a son and a daughter, and you know what, I am pretty sure that my son, over the course of his career, will make significantly more money for working less hard than my daughter. Because the stats tell me that that’s the case. And that really, really sucks. I’m sorry for you son, but this can be a teachable moment for him, where he can learn a super important lesson that can make him a real leader. Or he can just end up hating and resenting STEM women. It’s really your call how you want to play this.
@greatmom23 no offense, and I know what your son does is a lot of work, but its not “more than” any girl who received merit money did in high school.
I have a 4.0 UW GPA, 36 ACT, am a National Merit Semifinalist, am taking all my class at a local college, have done post AP Calculus math, college upper level physics, and freshman and sophomore mechanical engineering courses, and an official certification for SolidWorks (an engineering computer aided design program). In addition I have been heavily involved in robotics since 5th grade, was nominated for FIRST Dean’s List by my team (the only individual award in FIRST robotics), was on my robotics team’s leadership, lead and mentor younger robotics teams every year, have a summer job with the school district leading a robotics summer camp for which I developed my own official curriculum.
In addition to the robotics stuff I tutor elementary students in math, played violin for my church, went with a small group to El Salvador to run a summer camp focused on science, participated in NASA High School Aerospace Scholars, wrote a killer WPI supplement essay, got a job leading physics study groups at the university where I take classes, and rock climb.
I understand that the girls did get a preference in terms of WPI scholarship money this year, but that doesn’t mean they were any less qualified than the boys. Being a woman in STEM, I’ve participated in many activities where I’m the only girl in the room since 5th grade, and many other situations where I’m one of only a few. I’m glad WPI is trying to change that, because it will improve the college experience for the entire class of 2022.
@ccprofandmomof2 I also have a daughter who is currently in college in business school so I understand the unfair pitfalls that woman face and that sucks too. Two things can suck simultaneously. It would be a wonderful world if people were compensated and rewarded based on their merits and not on their gender. I hardly think he is gonna hate and resent the women who were recipients of the scholarships but it was an eye opening real life moment of “life isn’t fair” and at times there just isn’t much you can do about it. And of course I feel somewhat like a heel because for 4 years I encouraged and nagged at him to keep up his studies and work hard to get opportunities and I was oblivious to the trend to promote woman admissions to STEM schools.
@greatmom23 This is a wider political conversation about the existence or possibility of a meritocracy, which is not appropriate to this thread, so I’ll leave it at “good luck to your son, I’m sure he’ll do well wherever he ends up!”
@snowfairy137 You rock! And you totally deserve it, and the path will still be hard, but you’re on your way! Pay it forward.
@snowfairy137 I never said that he did “more than” any girl who received merit money… simply that some girls that did have lesser achievements (on paper) did get a larger offer. This is silly. Clearly the university is trying to entice a larger population of woman. I get that. Im sure that the woman that were accepted and received awards are smart and well rounded. It was an observation and a comment.
“And of course I feel somewhat like a heel because for 4 years I encouraged and nagged at him to keep up his studies and work hard to get opportunities and I was oblivious to the trend to promote”
I don’t know why you feel like a heel @greatmom23. Of course you have done the right thing. What is the alternative…encourage him to be lazy? I’m absolutely positive your son will benefit from all of his hard work. WPI didn’t work out for him. Kids are disappointed all the time with their acceptance and/or aid results. That’s why you cast a wide net.
My daughter is a junior at WPI who also had excellent stats when she was applying to colleges. She applied to 6 or 7 schools, one of which was RPI. We live not too far from RPI. I saw kids on the RPI forum, similar to my daughter, who received $40k+ in merit, while my daughter received a scholarship that was so low, we wondered why they bothered. It did sting a bit. But, that was RPI’s decision to pay to attract students from far away states. It was clear that was where the money was going. If only we lived in North Dakota! Fortunately, I didn’t have to nag my daughter to do well in high school, so no feeling like a heel here. She received other nice scholarships from excellent schools and all ended well. I am certain that will be the case for your son as well. Good luck to him!
@retiredfarmer Thanks for the info! Unfortunately, it appears that my son was not in the 46.7% of students who had their need met 100%, since our EFC is supposed to be only $500. Our gap, when you include subsidized and unsubsidized loans and work study, is $20K a year! We just don’t have that money. I do think schools who want to attract the more qualified students need to have a better incentive to get those kids to enroll. Because quite frankly, my son was not going to apply anywhere else but Princeton for RD once he got into WPI and BC, and has now decided to apply to three more colleges that DO meet 100% demonstrated need because WPI is out of the running with so little aid. Hubby is going to try to appeal, but we don’t have much ground to stand on until we start getting other offers. Waiting on BC right now, and then wishful for the RD schools he’s applying to… It’s just sad that he can’t go to one of his top choice schools just because they don’t offer enough aid. For all practical purposes, his application cycle should have been done once he got into both BC and WPI - other than Princeton which is right now his top choice, but he went RD so he could apply to BC and be considered for the Gabelli (since Princeton is so incredibly hard to get into). Of course, he was not offered an invitation for Gabelli, which was really shocking to us, but we really are hoping for a good FA package from them. His friend got into BC last year, parents make more money than us and she got a REALLY generous FA package there.
@greatmom23 All girls I have met who received a large amount of merit aid 100% deserve it. It’s incredibly disheartening to see a woman almost downsizing female applicants’ accomplishments by implying that if they were males, they wouldn’t receive the amount. I find that what WPI is doing to encourage young ladies to enroll is the more fair than just not accepting as many males. I for one know that I received the amount I did because I’m salutatorian in my class of more than 200, not because of my gender.