Im a high school senior now and looking into colleges. My favorite so far is NYU but living in New York City would be a lot different than living in the suburbs in a lot of ways. I saved up and bought a car a year ago now and it’s been great having it but I can see how I wouldnt want it if I go to NYU. Its a 2001 stickshift beetle so it wouldnt sell for much and it would be so hard to part with it so what are some other options for me? Could I park it cheap in New Jersey and take it out maybe once a week? Or leave it at home and tell my mom to drive it to work sometimes? I love my car soo much I dont know what to do.
You definitely won’t need or want a car at NYU. It’s going to be a big burden (and expensive) to even park it in NJ or Long Island somewhere and go get it. I highly recommend you leave it at home. Driving in NYC is best left to the professionals.
You’re getting ahead of yourself as a senior; you haven’t heard back yet. Still, to answer your question:
Trust me, you do not want the car.
I lived in New York for 8 years. For one of those years, I split my time between PA and NYC; I needed a car in rural PA so I bought one, and I drove it to NYC every other weekend or so to be with family and friends. It was more a pain in the butt than anything else, and I lived way uptown. On the weekends parking was okay to find, but I had to time my arrival perfectly so as not to overlap with rush hour traffic on Fridays. Yeesh. Sometimes it was useful when visiting friends that lived way out in Queens, but that was because after my friends put down roots they moved out to the boroughs. It was never useful if I wanted to go drink. Most weekends, I ended up parking it on the street on Friday and not touching it again until Sunday when I left to go back to PA.
Where in NJ would you even park it? North NJ has limited parking as well, and unless you have family or friends there with copious space you’d have to pay to park it. It wouldn’t be worth it even if you drove once a week, because you’d have to take the PATH or NJ Transit out to NJ to drive it and back. And making a date with your car may suck away your time to do other things. Parking it in New York in the Village would be prohibitively expensive. Besides, it would be silly and you won’t want it; you’ll take the subway and buses everywhere just like most other New Yorkers. And driving in New York takes some getting used to if you are used to the suburbs.
Just leave it home and let your parents take care of it. You can drive it when you get home for the holidays.
Everyone here is going to be vehemently against it, but it’s your choice. Parking in NYC is it’s own ballgame, but plenty of people DO own cars and drive them contrary to popular belief.
I live in Manhattan, don’t take the car.
No, no, no. Are you familiar with Manhattan? You can live there your whole life and never need a car. You can’t drive from place to place within Manhattan because there’s no place to park. And there’s just no place to keep it unless you want to spend at least $400/month on a garage space. You can’t keep it in NJ. Just no.
Sure, of course plenty of people in New York, and Manhattan specifically, own cars. That’s part of the reason for the traffic and the parking issues in the city - because lots of people do own cars. But car ownership in New York is some of the lowest in the country. Less than half of the 3 million households in New York own a car, and ownership is lowest in Manhattan, with only 23% of households in Manhattan owning a car.
According to the data, only 1.4 million households in the City out of the total 3.0 million owned a car. Within the five boroughs, ownership is lowest in Manhattan, with only 23% of households owning a car, followed by Brooklyn and the Bronx, with 44% and 46% respectively.Apr 5, 2012
The city is actually actively doing things to try to convince fewer people to buy cars and drive cars within the city because the burden on the infrastructure is already so great. It’s one of the reasons Uber is controversial in New York - more cars on the road.
I have friends who live in the city and own cars. There have definitely been some instances in which cars are useful to have. My only contention is that the car is usually more trouble than it’s worth. I myself and lots of my friends have had that experience driving around for 45+ minutes looking for a parking spot (one friend looked for one for 1.5 hours before finally giving up), getting a parking ticket because you deliberately parked in a street sweeping spot because there was nowhere else to park (or, even better, spending $20 to park in a garage overnight and having to move your car at 6 am before the price goes up to $50), having to sit in your car for 2 hours during street sweeping so you can get back into your spot after it’s over, spending 10 minutes easing out of a spot because someone boxed you in mad tight…ugh. Not worth it! Just take the subway like everybody else 
And most of the cars in NYC look like they just came out of Aleppo.
I think its difficult for people who live in the suburbs to fathom life without a car. Most people I know who have transplanted from the suburbs to Manhattan have come with a car and invariably sell it within a year. No amount of explaining or imploring will dissuade them. Its one of those lessons that you just have to learn from experience.
Bring your car. But you’ll regret it and/or sell it.
Of course people own cars in Manhattan. But not college students. People who own cars have garages in their buildings or close by and pay several hundred a month for the privilege. Some keep a car on the street and do the alternate-side-of-the-street parking thing, but, again, not appropriate for an NYU student. And the vehicle congestion is not due to the residents driving their cars—it’s from cars coming into the city from outside, commercial traffic, delivery trucks double-parked, and taxis. It’s not the person living on 83rd and Amsterdam driving to Duane Reade to pick up a prescription.
Don’t bring the car…also read this post.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/08/the-expensive-romance-of-nyu/278904/
Another person who lives in Manhattan: do not bring a car. As another poster said, about 50% of HOUSEHOLDS own cars. In the burbs every person over age 16 practically owns a car, so that’s 3 cars per household, which means Manhattanites have bout 1/6th rate of car ownership. You’d have to do opposite-side-of-the-street parking every other day, deal with people dinging your car, or scraping it accidentally, never have a chance to use it because once you find parking you won’t want ot give up the space. In the end you;'d bring it home or sell it. Or you’d rent a parking space for the price of most people’s rent each month. It’s just not worth it. If you need a car, do what Manhattanites do: use carshare. Use enterprise rental carshare (you rent by the hour) or Zipcar. But mainly the transportation in the City and from the City to the surrounding area is superb. You will save money and hassle. Leave the car home.