<p>My daughter wants to be a Math Teacher. She will be graduation with a math degree from SUNY Binghamton. She has applied and been accepted to both Binghamton Graduate School of Education and Columbia Teacher's College. Any thoughts? Binghamton is 2/3 the cost for tuition and it is not clear that she has housing at Columbia nor how much it would be.</p>
<p>Doesn’t matter. Education is not really a prestige-focused field, and she’d be able to get a teaching job (especially in a critical field like math) from either school. TC is great but Binghamton is also very well-respected, and I don’t think TC is better to the point that it’s worth paying 2/3 more tuition.</p>
<p>Housing at Columbia is expensive. I am a grad student here and I live in grad subsidized apartments; for a 1-bedroom, my husband and I pay $1385 a month (include Internet but not utilities. Our utilities run about $100 a month). And by “one-bedroom” I mean really a two-room studio. I do know that TC also has some residence hall-style housing with a variety of different housing types (some with shared bathrooms, some with shared kitchens, and a few efficiency units with private kitchens and bathrooms) and the prices range from a low of $3,700 per semester (single room with bathroom and kitchen shared among about 20 residents) to a high of $9,600 per semester (an efficiency/studio unit with private bathroom and kitchen).</p>
<p>I would never recommend living in a studio at that price, though - for 9 months that’s nearly $2,200 a month for a <em>studio</em>, which is ridiculous. A student who wanted to live frugally could find a shared apartment with roommates in Harlem, Washington Heights or Inwood for around $700-900 a month depending on how many roommates they were willing to have and how small a place they were willing to live in. I shared a rather large apartment with a roommate in Washington Heights for $900 each per month ($1800 total). We each had our own room and there was a huge living room and a kitchen large enough to eat in. In fact, I didn’t want to live in Columbia’s graduate housing; I only agreed to it because my husband really wanted to be able to walk to class.</p>
<p>But that’s all a moot point anyway because given the choice between an MA/M.Ed I would definitely pick SUNY and not live back. I bet Binghamton is way cheaper than TC too. It’s win-win-win all around.</p>
<p>Well, since she graduated a year and a half early from undergrad due to IB credits, we will be paying for her 1.5 years at Columbia! She is living in a single in a suite which is I guess around 4400 a semester. We are kind of happy that she can live “on campus” with others who are in the same program. Also she isn’t even 21 yet so it is nice for her to be surrounded by more “structure”.</p>
<p>Binghamton is 2/3 the cost of Columbia? How much is tuition at either school? I know that the cost of B vs C is huge on the UG level, Surprising if it’s so close for a Masters.</p>
<p>I think it comes down to what you can afford and want to pay. I don’t think it’s going to make a whole lot of difference in job prospects–in fact there are a lot more SUNY grads in teaching in our public school district than from Columbia; don’t know how that works with relationships and pull. YOu want some ivy luster and a change of scene from Binghamton and have the money, great.</p>
<p>Wait, are you saying that she’s already chosen Columbia? Is she still deciding? I’m confused - I assumed that the November post was for the Fall 2014.</p>
<p>$1,100/month for a room in a suite in Manhattan not so bad. That’s quite a bit more than she’d pay for most rooms in the more affordable areas of Manhattan (probably $750-950), but not out of line for what she’d pay to live in the same neighborhood (Morningside Heights). I’m not sure that she’ll necessarily be surrounded with more “structure” (it’s a residence hall…) but there is something to be said for living closer to campus.</p>
<p>But I also don’t know how you got the 2/3 of tuition, either…unless your daughter is a non-NYS resident. Bing’s graduate programs are $411 per credit, while TC’s are $1344 per credit. TC’s 36-credit MA program will cost $48,384, while Binghamton’s 42-credit MAT program will cost $17,262. That means that Bing’s program is about 35% (1/3) of the cost of TC’s.</p>
<p>Not to mention that living in Binghamton is far less expensive than living in New York. Bing has no on-campus housing for graduate students but it looks like one-bedroom apartments in the surrounding area run from $450-650/month, and a two-bedroom share could be ~$750. Even if you have to sign a one-year lease on a $500 apartment, that’s $6,000. A single room with no private bathroom at TC will cost you $8,800 for just nine months. Summer term is a little less, but assuming it’s ~$3,000 we’re still talking nearly $12,000 in housing costs for one year. TC’s program is the same length as Bing’s (3 semesters).</p>
<p>So that makes Bing $23,262 for the 1.5 years while TC is $60,384. That makes Bing 29% of the cost of a year at TC. Even if she can’t attend full-time during the summer at Binghamton and has to stay for another fall semester, a $500 apartment will cost an extra $2,000 during those 4 months, which still doesn’t make the price approach TC’s. This isn’t including living expenses.</p>
<p>I agree with cpt - it comes down to what you want to pay. It’s not going to make a big difference in your daughter’s job prospects; also, I have a couple of friends who go to/went to TC (I’m at Columbia myself) and it’s a little bit dysfunctional, and I haven’t seen that TC has huge pull in the NYC school district. I just don’t see the point of paying more than twice as much (almost 3 times as much) to go to TC when it’s not going to make a big career difference - but to each their own.</p>
Update: My DD ended up going to Columbia…she graduated from Bing in 2.5 years so we paid for her to go to Columbia as well. She graduated this past May , and now she has a job teaching 9th grade algebra starting in Brooklyn this year.
Hooray for your daughter!
Congrats to your daughter! I think columbia is great if you can afford it, my daughter went to CUNY Hunter for about $20,000 total for MA and has a similar job right out of grad school.