<p>I'm applying to NYU, a school known for stingy financial aid. On their application, they ask to state the age of all of your siblings, and if applicable, where they go to college. </p>
<p>I have one brother who attends The Cooper Union. If you don't know, Cooper gives every student it accepts a full-tuition scholarship. </p>
<p>So on to my questions: If I get accepted to NYU, will NYU use my brother's attending Cooper on a full-tuition scholarship against me when putting together my financial aid package? Will they essential assert that my family would only be sending, financially, one kid to school at the same time (which isn't really true, considering housing / fees / art supplies / etc aren't free at Cooper). </p>
<p>Any thoughts or insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.</p>
<p>I imagine that NYU knows that CU only covers tuition, so they’ll likely consider that. It’s really no different than if you had a sibling who was going to less expensive public. </p>
<p>Either way, your bigger concern should be that NYU is terrible with aid no matter what your situation is, so if you’re needing a lot of aid, you’ll need some financial safeties.</p>
<p>NYU doesn’t meet full need of most of its students and it leverages its aid; it also utilizes merit aid. Your FAFSA EFC will determine eligibility. </p>
<p>NYU probably doesn’t look closely at the underlying numbers behind the FAFSA EFC, but rather at where you stand in their applicant pool when accepted. Roughly the top 5% of their accepted students get very generous aid. From there they seem to follow a tiered system. At the time my daughter was accepted, the “tier” she was in was given grants of roughly $8-$10K in grant aid, regardless of EFC, so long as they qualified for aid – that is, my daughter had that grant with a $5K EFC, applicants with $10K or $20K EFC’s in the same “tier” were offered the same grants, applicants with 0 EFC’s same thing. We learned this through comparing aid packages. At the time it was fairly easy to do because NYU also had special event weekends for admitted students – they invited their top students to attend the first one, middle range students to attend the 2nd weekend, and the rest of the applicants got no invite. </p>
<p>So basically your GPA and test scores are a lot more important for NYU than your FAFSA EFC. </p>
<p>If you believe that NYU is a clear match or safety for you, then you might get good aid for them. If you think that NYU is a reach, then you really should not expect to see much in the way of aid. </p>
<p>Since only 5% of NYU’s students are awarded merit scholarships ranging from $1k to full tuition ( and not all of its colleges award merit scholarships), it suggests that it uses merit scholarships as an incentive to get the very top students. </p>
<p>If you’ve snatched up another school’s top prospects or leapfrogged it in the U.S. News rankings, you’ve eaten its lunch…With their ever-expanding reach, enrollment managers are inevitably dogged by controversy. But it’s the way they have changed financial aid—from a tool to help low-income students into a strategic weapon to entice wealthy and high-scoring students—that has placed them in the crosshairs of those who champion equal access to higher education. Adopting data-mining and pricing techniques from the airline and marketing industries, they have developed a practice called financial-aid leveraging that allows a school to buy, within certain limits, whatever class it wants. Often under orders from a president and trustees, enrollment managers direct financial aid to students who will increase a school’s revenues and rankings. They have a host of ugly tactics to deter low-income students and to extract as much money as possible from each entering class.</p>
<p>NYU is by far my dream school; fell in love with it last spring. Frankly - and ironically considering their financial aid reputation - it’s the only school that I have easily envisioned myself paying private, out-of-state tuition for. But it’s only a reach. </p>
<p>I was inclined to say that if I do get in come March/April, I would go ahead and accept their offer of admission if the package was good enough / better than expected. But seeing as I wouldn’t be near the top of the applicant pool, that isn’t happening. </p>
<p>In-state (NJ), I’m applying to Rutgers (accepted), TCNJ, Montclair, and Ramapo. Out of state, CUNY Hunter, SUNY Binghamton, St. Johns, and Pace.</p>
<p>What are your stats? At privates, it doesn’t usually matter if you’re in-state or out-of-state - the price is usually the same. There are few exceptions to that rule.</p>
<p>Weighed GPA: 3.9535 / Unweighted GPA: 3.4749 (I quickly calculated that UW GPA, my school doesn’t provide it) Rank: 24 / 180, top 15% of graduating class SAT: 1860 (Critical Reading: 650 / Mathematics: 580 / Writing:630) SAT Subject Tests: U.S History (760), Spanish w/NO listening (740) AP Tests: U.S History (5)<br> Significant Course Work: 8 Honors courses and 3 Advanced Placement Courses by graduation, with two years of credited Gifted and Talented participation </p>
<p>Honors:
Inductee, French National Honor Society (9th)
Secretary / Officer, French National Honor Society (12th)
Academic Honor Roll (9th-12th)</p>
<p>Senior-Year Load: AP English Lit, AP Bio, PreCalculus, French 5, Holocaust Studies</p>
<p>Clubs:
-Environmental Club (11th-12th), Chairman of Art from Recycled Materials Contest at Annual School Art Show (12th)
-Business Club, flyer and poster designer (12th grade)
-Art Club (9th)
-Engineering Club (9th) </p>
<p>**Activities: **
-Participated in theatric presentations promoting the study of French to my local middle school for increased French enrollment at my high school (9th-12th)
-M</p>
<p>As a URM, you never know. But the answer to your original question is that schools that don’t meet need won’t be too concerned about what your sibling’s situation is as they are not attempting to make this work financially for families.</p>
<p>At Profile schools that do meet need, they would look at the out of pocket cost to the family of your brother’s school in their calculation.</p>
<p>Hmom is right. As a URM, it’s an unknown whether NYU might be more generous to boost their diversity numbers.
However, your SAT is not high for NYU, so that would be a negative. </p>
<p>NYU Middle 50% of
First-Year Students Percent Who
Submitted Scores
SAT Critical Reading: 610 - 710 87%
SAT Math: 600 - 720 87%
SAT Writing: 620 - 710 87%
ACT Composite: 27 - 31 13% </p>
<p>You can’t depend on your URM status since NYU may get a lot of Hispanic applicants because it’s located in NY, so you’ll need your financial safeties. </p>
<p>NYU uses leveraged admisssions management. It’s a practice used (using several different styles) to get the best students, to use FA wisely, and to use merit wisely so as to maintain or boost ranking and maintain economic stability.</p>
<p>That’s what I thought. In states with high Hispanic populations, Hispanics sometimes aren’t really that much of a URM (an exception might be Calif and the UC system). </p>
<p>To get a URM advantage as a Hispanic, target the schools/regions that desperately want more Hispanic kids. :)</p>
<p>That SAT score is haunting me. For whatever its worth though, my guidance counselor has told me NYU can be quite arbitrary. But I know I shouldn’t really be banking on that. </p>
<p>As for the URM boost, I guess yeah, it’d be more of a tip than anything. :/</p>
<p>Im a dual US / Colombian citizen and Undecided. </p>
<p>And my parents don’t make much (I would say < $55,000 a year; their income went down this past year so I’m not sure what it’ll turn out to be) nor do they have much saved up. My brother is paying for his $20,000 freshman year at Cooper on a number of scholarships and money he saved up working full-time for a year after high school. </p>
<p>So I would definitely have to take out significant loans for NYU, which I’m not sure would even be possible…</p>
<p>I really, really like NYU, I know a lot about the place; I think it’d “fit” there and I did my best to portray that in my application, but I understand the chances of me ending up there after both admissions and finances are slim.</p>
<p>If you like NYU, there’s no harm in applying – as long as you keep in mind that it is unlikely that you will get sufficient aid there. I mean – my d. applied to NYU, got in, got an unworkable financial aid offer, talked to the financial aid people, and turned NYU down in favor of another college. But except for the financial aid part she had positive experiences with NYU. </p>
<p>Just don’t get caught up in the idea of a “dream school” – and keep in mind that it’s a long shot when it comes to money.</p>
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