Financial aid policies revised

Rensselaer’s Student Guide to Financial Aid webpage was updated on April 25 to include a clause which specifies that, as of April 2020, financial aid “may also be revised due to unexpected business disruptions caused by natural disasters or other emergency situations impacting campus operations.”

The clause was not present on the page as recently as April 20 as an internet archive of the page from that date does not contain the new clause.

Previously, the website maintained that merit-based aid will “neither increase nor decrease in subsequent academic years.” This was updated to include the phrase “unless it is due to reasons described in the Revision of Awards section of the Student Guide to Financial Aid.”

Rensselaer recently reduced all financial aid for the students participating in this year’s Arch semester due to the move to online learning. This decision was announced April 16 on RPI’s COVID-19 Arch 2020 FAQ and applied to students’ accounts the next day, all before the financial aid webpage was updated with the new clause.