<p>I recently received my financial aid award from SU and was awarded $34,000, which is pretty darn good. However, I come from a extremely poor family and the $34,000 is about $10,000 short of the cost of attendance at SU. Do any of you guys know of a successful strategy to convince SU to award me more money to make my attendance possible, because my father or I cannot afford to take any more loans (federal or private). Please help...need all the advice I can get!!</p>
<p>Frankly, you will rarely get 100% scholarships. You should have know that to begin with!</p>
<p>"Frankly, having to pay only 10K is quite terrific for a private school as Syracuse. You could make up the difference with Pell Grants, Student loans and working during the year and in the summers. If you do this, you should be able to graduate with little or no debt. </p>
<p>Another option is to notify admission of any other comparable scholarship offers. They might match it.</p>
<p>If these ideas aren't suitable to you, go to a state university. If you can get some decent aid, you might be better off there.</p>
<p>When I first received my finaid award, they gave me $12k. If they multiplied that by 3, it still wouldn't come close to being able to afford the place. I live with my mother, and she makes less than $20k a year. I had a letter from my guidance counselor saying that my father was nowhere to be found and wouldn't be contributing any money. When I received my award, I wrote them a letter reinforcing that, and telling them that their offer was simply nowhere near what I needed. I ended up getting $40k.</p>
<p>At first glance it appears that you and your father live together, without your mother? If so, play this up to the finaid people and explain in writing how much of a burden it will be on your family. Play the fiddle. Tell them how much you want to go to SU (if that is true), and all that good stuff. You'll have to earn it. And once you write a letter, give it a week for them to receive it, then call the finaid office and ask to speak to your counselor (theyre assigned based on last name). Reinforce to the person what your letter said - and start talking quickly, before they can interrupt you :P Bother the hell out of them. </p>
<p>I have recommended the 'give them a call' routine to my friends' friends who applied to SU and needed more money, but they seemed to not have much luck, which is why I recommend you write them a letter instead. The excuse they apparently gave is that they "ran out of money", which is a load of **** - so keep pressing them for it. They can probably find you a scholarship or some spare money somewhere.</p>
<p>Good luck and let me know how it goes</p>
<p>I absolutely must bash state universities. Particularly in the northeast US, they struggle for money because of the prevalence of private colleges. They have nowhere near the resources available to a private college, and put their students at a greater disadvantage when searching the job market. Yes, a lot of it is accredited to personal initiative and shrewdness, but at the end of the day, nobody can argue that they provide an equal education, or equal opportunity to their students.</p>
<p>Anarchy45, are you kidding? Schools like Maryland, Virginia, Penn State, and Binghamton are excellent and rival in quality most private schools. SUNY Stonybrook has an excellent science program. Univ. of Mass has all kinds of top programs. In fact, both Massachusetts and NY have specialized colleges that students can get some excellent training and an unbeatably low price such as Mass College of Art, Suny Purchase, FIT etc. </p>
<p>Moreover, even attending a good state university as an out of state student is usually much cheaper than going to a private school. Check out many of the Ohio State schools, Wisconsin, Indiana etc., and they usually have plenty of both need-based aid and merit aid to boot.</p>
<p>Bottom line: Don't discount all state universities, They offer some terrific programs at bargain basement prices.</p>
<p>Maryland and Virginia aren't anywhere near "north" :-) And on top of that, they have significantly fewer private colleges than up here (yeah they still have some, but it's nothing like the density of New York or Mass.)</p>
<p>SUNY schools are a total joke - the state government is so screwed up, the college system hardly knows if it'll be in business from one year to the next. They are incredibly easy to get into, their standards are low, most of the professors are simply 'average' or worse, and they have nowhere near the big bucks of a private college. UMass is a joke too - a muppet could get accepted. The only decent public higher education systems are in the western United States, with the clear winner being California. They don't have the hundred-year-old private colleges to compete with like we do here. You will -generally- find more intelligent, more motivated people in a private college, often because they had brains enough to get accepted & receive funding, or because their rich parents had the resources to make them smart. We have a lot of stupid ones as well, but I guess the adage "win a few, lose a few" would apply. </p>
<p>When New York State stops being run by the lobbyists (Jan 07 when Eliot Spitzer becomes governor), THEN we will see money available for better need-based aid, and better public education. Until then, I stand behind my words :-) Northeastern public schools "aint got ****" on the private ones.</p>
<p>I suggest Anarchy45 that you are an elitist snob. No offense,but it is true. I can't even believe that you believe what you wrote!</p>
<p>First, the SUNY systems are NOT a joke. SUNY and especially Binghamton is rather hard to get into, although everything is relative. It isn't as hard as the ivys. Admittedly, Stonybrook isn't MIT or Berkeley and Binghamton isn't Williams,but they do offer some very strong programs for a bargain basement price.</p>
<p>FIT and Suny Purchase have fabulous programs in the arts that are offered at an unbeatable price.</p>
<p>SUNY and Binghamton have very decent rating in US News and were both listed in the top 357 schools by Petersons.. By the way, I was from NY and lived there for many years. I am familiar with NY state schools.</p>
<p>U Mass has some great programs and teachers. Mass College of Art, which is a state school, is terrific.</p>
<p>Finally, admission toughness does not necessarily corelate with program quality. There are a number of very fine schools that aren't terribly hard to be admitted to. RIT, for example, has some fabulous programs and isn't that hard to get admitted to ( I have used RIT as an example,but I do know that they aren't a state school."</p>
<p>Every admission counselor that I know will certainly support the proposition that there are many fine schools that aren't that hard to get into. In fact, many of these have better programs than some schools with supposedly higher SAT and GPA requirements. Again, this has to be evaluated on a program by program basis.</p>
<p>I know of several top doctors who graduated from Univ of Vermont. I know of some top lawyers who attended UConn undergrad. I suggest that you need to rethink your views on all this.</p>
<p>Sure I'm an elitist snob - only, I'm not "elite" in socioeconomic terms :-)</p>
<p>As evidence of my claims, I have several friends who go to SUNY schools - a few to Albany, and a few out in the western part of the state. None of them like it, they constantly complain about the low quality of the professors and the ease of the curiculum. Rankings mean little; Syracuse is ranked 50th, but I am certain that there are more than 50 universities better than SU.</p>
<p>I would return to my earlier argument about more intangible aspects: that private universities tend to have far greater resources at their disposal. Private partnerships, lots of money to expand facilities, attract top staff and bring speakers to campus. They tend to attract more intelligent students, which improves the overall experience of the college years. They are able to provide better opportunities for their students- for example, SU paid over $1200 to allow me to attend a week-long program in DC this past April. I highly doubt that cash-strapped SUNY would have presented the same opportunity. Another resource is the money they make available to student organizations. Although this leads to a great deal of petty fighting in the Student Association, it again enriches the college experience. Money isn't so much an issue as it is on SUNY campuses.</p>
<p>I, too, have had many good professors from public schools. The smartest (albeit the strangest) came from the University of Colorado - Denver. I learned more in a month with him than in an entire year at Syracuse in ALL my classes. But I believe that, at the end of the day, a private university provides far more than a public institution.</p>
<p>^ so negative...lol.</p>
<p>Just to be clear, there is nothing "bargain basement" about SUNY. The estimated costs per year for an NYS resident attending SUNY Binghamton is just under $16,500. There's nothing cheap about that ... cheaper than private, perhaps, but not cheap.</p>
<p>taxguy,
the 10,000 I have to pay is after my pell grant, seog, stafford loan, work-study, and perkins loan have been used. Also, I would like to note that 10,000 is a lot of money when it is only a little less than your family's gross income, but thanks for your advice.</p>
<p>if you needed the money you should have applied to the HEOP program. the state covers most of the tuition and you graduate with little or not debt as most of the money comes through grants or scholarships. im not exactly destitute but it would have been a burden for my family to pay 45K a year. I think my family only needs to pay about 700$ a year after all the money they gave me. The program is very selective and only about 6,000 people get into it all over NYS. You need to have amazing grades and show that you dont make too much money. As per SUNY Schools they didnt offer me even half as much money as SU did nor could have they afforded the same type of program's that are avail. at SU. Granted Bing is a good SUNY school, its pretty much the only one. Other than that the rest are mediocre, dare i say even pedestrian. People who have the stronger will and intelligence will find a way to fund their education if they chose to put in the effort. SUNY schools take everyone who applies (with the exception of BING) and therefor can not be ranked as highly as private schools.</p>
<p>me and kwood had an extensive conversation today via IM - he is from Iowa and so wouldnt qualify for HEOP. However we ran the numbers and he is only about $3000 away from meeting the costs, so things are looking up :)</p>
<p>good for him. i hope to see him at SU this fall. anarchy you got a facebook? you and i seem to both share similar views on higher education in the state of NY. =P</p>
<p>sure do - Kaylen Thorpe - the one and only :)</p>