CUNY Macaulay Honors College vs. SUNY Stony Brook University

Applying to College
1

Rejected by all the privates except a waitlist from Swarthmore. Although I’m still fighting for a chance but now I have to first make a decision between Macaulay Honors program at Baruch College and Stony Brook. Please help…! My intended major is psychology; criminal psychology, to be more specific. (yet, it’s not solid.)

Macaulay Honors:

Pros:
1.Free tuitions
2.Free study abroad programs *** (although from what I heard the school pays the tuition for only two semesters of studying abroad, I’ll check the details out)
3.A MacBook Pro

Cons:

  1. No actual campus experience
  2. Feel less engaged

Stony Brook

Pros:

  1. Big campus
  2. Get to live in the dorm and have different experience from staying home. ***

Cons:

  1. Expensive study abroad costs
  2. Paying student loan (not great amount, my net cost is around 6000 and the loan is 5500 per year)

It’s a tough decision , I been thinking about going away for college but Macaulay offers a free-ride for mostly everything.
In fact, I’m also planning to transfer after freshmen year (last shot for my dream school!) . If that’s the case, definitely Macaulay. But I don’t know, if I didn’t make the transfer happen… Ugh… frustrating

2

Start at Macaulay because of the money. Then if you want to transfer after a year or two you can do that. But at least you will have saved a boatload of money on the first year or so.