Current Barnard Student: Ask Me Anything!

@calmom - In 1996 my wife and I moved into our dream NY apartment. Duplex, 2 terraces plus a private 20x20’ roof directly off the master bedroom, 2 full baths, a view of the Chrysler Building, brick fireplace, etc. Affordable only because it was a 4 floor walkup and the landlord liked us. After 2 years it went co-op and we had the option to buy but we couldn’t afford the 50% down payment.

But we didn’t try. We didn’t meet with lenders or family members or anybody. We knew we couldn’t afford it so we walked away from a $350,000 apartment that sold for $1.9 million 3ish years later. I’m pretty certain that no lender would have given us a 50% loan but we didn’t ask.

I don’t want my daughter to listen to a friend say she got better than expected aid somewhere (even if it’s an extra $500 to a state school) and always wonder why we didn’t even try to get into and pay for Fordham. We’ve had the money talks and she’s really quite frugal. We’ve agreed that what we have to look at isn’t the net cost of NYU of $X but the spread between $X and net cost of UNC-Chapel Hill of $Y. I know that we won’t be able to afford it but she should try and not second guess 20 years later.

Luckily we have Chapel Hill and NCState.

BTW - We lived in NYC for years and know first hand about the cost of living, plus we have NYU alum friends who have told us their financial tales of woe. Our eyes are pretty open.

I don’t know what your finances are or what your DD’s other stats are, so I don’t know what will be affordable to you. Fordham may very well give enough aid to make things manageable – my daughter did get what I thought was a surprisingly generous offer from Fordham, given her stats – and I know that Fordham did take her true need into account because of communications received from the financial aid office. It wasn’t meeting full need, but it was significantly more than NYU offered and on par with the offer she had from another highly selective school that purported to meet full need. So my comment was addressed to NYU only.

NYU simply doesn’t care what actual need is. They take need into account to determine whether an applicant qualifies for aid but not to determine amount of aid. Rather, they have a tiered system of awarding aid. The very top applicants may be offered their most generous scholarships, including full tuition - but test scores are important for that – so my daughter and I assume yours was out of the running. The year my daughter applied her FAFSA EFC was under $5000 – NYU offered a $7000 grant and, after an “appeal” raised it to $8000. That was typical – a small 4-figure grant, increased by a sum of $1000-$2000 when the student “appealed.” (I put appeal in quotes because no one was really interested in the facts) As tuition has gone up over the years, I think the base-line, lower tier financial aid award has also increased, but it is still doesn’t come close to meeting need. So given lower-range test scores, your DD is likely to end up in that lower-category tier with NYU that my daughter was in – or potentially worse, in the bottom category of students who are offered no grant funds whatsoever.

As I posted, as long as you are happy with in-state options, it doesn’t matter – but you do need to be clear with your daughter now what your own limits are on financing. Because every spring on CC there are kids who get into schools their parents can’t possibly afford, and anger and disappointment all around. And all too often the parent has previously said or implied something along the lines of, “if you get in, we’ll make it work”. So the time for the financial discussion is now. Because high school kids don’t really understand loans and borrowing either.

I hope your daugher feels the same way.

But does your daughter know that?

It’s just that down the line the thing she may be second guessing will be the choice early on to forego applying to private colleges with more generous aid policies – for example, a college like Bryn Mawr.

I’m not telling you to push your daughter into changing her application list – I just am saying that you need to make sure that she fully understands your financial limitations now, before she sends in applications.

I mean, if you are planning on buying a car and know that you have only $10K to spend, then you aren’t even going to step foot on a luxury car dealership – you’ll revise your expectations and focus on used cars, and do some research to figure out which makes and model years will fit your budget.

NYU is the school she cares least about and won’t mind a bit if it’s cost prohibitive. She’s ok with the idea of going to Chapel Hill and will probably get in. We looked at Bryn Mawr and a number of other places but she decided that if she couldn’t be in NY then she didn’t see the point in paying out of state rates. It’s where she wants to live when she graduates. There aren’t any other NYC colleges that float her boat, nor any other NC schools that she needs to consider. She may decide to drop NYU on her own but other than that, her list is sealed.

We have absolutely never hinted that we will find a way to make it work and she knows that. We have the resources to send her, and her sister, to a UNC school without making them take out loans. Anything above that will be the topic of a meeting with our financial advisor who manages our retirement and has built college expenses into his model of our future.

As Henny Youngman said, I have enough money to last me the rest of my life. Unless I want to buy something.

Thank you for your time! Your cat is adorable.

@AdotHAM - I’m really sorry that I hijacked your thread!!

Actually it is one of my daughter’s cats. :slight_smile:

Hey! Okay so I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m an Indian. So how’s the diversity and sense of community at Barnard?

Hi I know that Barnard says their notification date is mid December. Does that mean December 15th? Are you able to find out what earlier?