<p>Carnegie Mellon will match or exceed offers from roughly comparable schools. They match the amount you wind up paying rather than the dollar amount of the offer so the offer could be substantially more if the comparable school costs substantially less. Their initial offer may not be competitive but their adjusted offer will be competitive by definition.</p>
<p>Both DePaul and UArts freshman GPAs are not particularly impressive. My daughter’s GPA was higher than the school average and we got good offers from both. I suspect this is a good rule of thumb. If you exceed the freshman GPA of any school or the top 10-20% GPA, you are likely to get a competitive offer.</p>