Same. Waiting to see what happens with the financial aid part of it.
Congrats to all that received awards — received substantial awards from all other schools except Rochester.
Love the feel of the Yellowjackets but not sure I want to get our student excited about it when others are offering 25 to 30k a year.
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Yeah, I personally think it offers opportunities for an academic experience significantly above what its “ranking” might imply, but that is then a lot of money over four years.
I would be interested in hearing more about this. My son got in without merit. We are going to visit for the first time in April.
I just emailed my son’s admissions officer (the email address was in his portal) and she said fa offers should come out by the end of the week.
So I really like Rochester academically.
They are a midsize R1 research university, which is the same sort of sweet spot occupied by most Ivy+ universities such that you are not just part of an enormous horde of undergrads, but there is still a lot of advanced research going on. And they are very committed to making sure undergrads have research opportunities, including outside of STEM in the humanities and social sciences.
Generally they have a great diversity of strong departments, and they are set up to encourage exploration in depth, meaning you do these clusters outside your major, which can become minors or second majors if you want. Engineering and liberal arts and sciences are all in one school.
They also just have a really academic culture, and tend to place well in grad programs (understanding like everywhere, you need to be a top student in your department to get placed in top grad programs).
For someone like me who thinks it is important that schools be good at being schools, all this is great. But it also comes at a price, because it is a costly model and Rochester does not have a huge endowment (not bad, but well less than Ivies or like WUSTL, Vandy, or Rice). Rochester does have a pretty robust merit program, but certainly not everyone gets merit, and many only get enough to make it a little less expensive than other privates, but still more expensive than most OOS, let alone in-state.
So is it worth it? As usual, I think that is a very personal decision and rationally depends on family circumstances. If you can comfortably afford it and your kid really wants that sort of academic environment, I think it absolutely can be, at full price or with mild merit.
But if it would be a significant difference in financial burden, or you want to save for other purposes, or your kid just isn’t that into it, then not so much.
Still, my point is there is real academic value there. But exactly what that means in terms of acceptable cost is personal.
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So you can appeal the merit process per my son’s admissions officer. I would reach out to your child’s AO and see if an appeal would help. The do not match other school’s offers but will consider new accomplishments and enrollment trends. Good luck!
Ours hit last night.
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We missed the virtual Kick Off Event last night (3/25/24) — what was presented there? D24 received an RD acceptance but is undecided yet.
We appealed last year and were awarded $5k annual Dean’s scholarship. We listed the other offers from other schools, which were considerably more. She was going either way, so an email resulting in $20k is definitely worth the effort.
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