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.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute And State University:
https://www.collegeconfidential.com/colleges/virginia-polytechnic-institute-and-state-university/
Join Virginia Tech Forum Discussions: https://talk.collegeconfidential.com/t/virginia-tech-class-of-2025-decision-release-date-mar-1-15/2105847/861
