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</p>
<p>Where is this informaton?</p>
<p>No one soft-pedalled anything in this thread. Yes, its is a tough time for a wake-up call, but IMO some posters weren’t just blunt, they were kinda cruel. JMO.</p>
<p>Only 5% of the 2009 entering class received merit-based scholarships (which ranged in value from $1,000 to $25,000). Also, please note that not all NYU schools/colleges award merit-based scholarships.</p>
<p>I wrote that less than 5% get scholarships because not all NYU schools award scholarships. But, if they include those who aren’t eligible at all, then the number is 5%. Not many.</p>
<p>And, that’s why only those with really high stats or some other desired aspect can even have a reasonable expectation of receiving even a modest scholarship.</p>
<p>No one soft-pedaled anything in this thread. Yes, its is a tough time for a wake-up call, but IMO some posters weren’t just blunt, they were kinda cruel. JMO.</p>
<p>No one did soft-pedal…and that’s why the posts have been criticized by a few. I don’t recall many cruel posts (I think one student may have gone over the line - but we see students doing that all the time on CC), but maybe I missed a word or two. Or, maybe your definition of cruel is different. </p>
<p>I also realize that people who aren’t used to have to being tough when kids have unreasonable expectations (maybe because their own children are more reasonable??), so “tough love” words can seem cruel. Maybe?</p>
<p>m2ck,
Oh, you were talking about merit based scholarships. That is deceiving because, NYU is focusing on giving more need-based aid, so, really 57% of their undergrads get aid according to princetonreview.</p>
<p>I guess people here on CC have to be the “tough love police”, somebody has to do it.
Kids in general, no matter what, have some unreasonable expectations. We all have had to practice tough love with our kids. No one is more or less the authority. Obviously all of your points were taken by the OP. She has left the thread. TOUGH LOVE…</p>
<p>I just wish her the best. She and loads of students are getting their reality check NOW as the deadlines have passed and are scrambling to secure funds for this fall.</p>
<p>Again, well said, milkandsugar.</p>
<p>Oh, you were talking about merit based scholarships. That is deceiving because, NYU is focusing on giving more need-based aid, so, really 57% of their undergrads get aid according to princetonreview.</p>
<p>I wasn’t being deceiving. It’s their own words. Like many people, I don’t consider FA “scholarships”…those are really grants/loans/work-study. The point is that those with good stats applying to NYU do not have a reasonable expectation for merit scholarships. That is surprising to many with high stats that get nothing or very small merit scholarships. </p>
<p>I would applaud NYU for efforts of being "on giving more need-based aid if that were really true. It’s not. </p>
<p>57% may get aid, but since much of that aid is federal grants, NY state grants (TAP), and fed loans, the institution isn’t generously giving its own money for need-based aid.</p>
<p>44% of the aid that NYU “gives” is loans. I would imagine that another good percent is federal and state aid (not NYU money). </p>
<p>In the case of the OP, she only got about $20k in free money. As a resident of NY and a 0 EFC student, it’s obvious that about half of that $10k is not from NYU’s coffers. It’s from tax-payers…that she would get if she went to a SUNY/CUNY, etc. </p>
<p>So, for a 0 EFC student to only get about $10k in free aid from NYU makes it very difficult to believe that they are focused on giving more need-based aid. They need to really sharpen their focus to be believable in this area.</p>
<p>If the OP is still reading, I understand that you’re looking for practical advice. I think Cptofthehouse gave a good outline of steps you can take in post #10 of this thread – it doesn’t quite make ends meet, but gets you closer.</p>
<p>Good luck. Big debt is, of course, something that can drag you down and actually make your dreams far less likely to come true, but I think you’ve gotten that message here already. All the best to you.</p>
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<p>SUNY Purchase, for one. See <a href=“Search results for • Purchase College”>Search results for • Purchase College;
<p>Also, Brooklyn College:
<a href=“http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/pub/departments/film/[/url]”>http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/pub/departments/film/</a></p>
<p>That’s good to know. Maybe with Pell, Tap, and a Stafford loan, this student could have an affordable alternative.</p>
<p>Are they still accepting applicants?</p>
<p>I think that the frustrating thing here is that NYU comes up as being a rather terrible school for financial aid more often than any other school I can remember. USC has a great film program too, but you don’t see dozens and dozens of kids making postings desperately trying to make the finances work, because either USC has much better financial aid or doesn’t admit kids for whom they can’t put together a reasonably workable package. </p>
<p>What is sad is how much kids hang their star on being able to go to this one school. I don’t get it. I read the stories of the NYU graduates with huge debt loads who are so unhappy with the choices that they made and I wonder why don’t the high school seniors get any of this?</p>
<p>I’m sorry for the OP – clearly she has talent and drive, but I can’t see how she’s going to make that work absent some major outside scholarship. If she’d won one of the big scholarships, or been sponsored by one of the groups that helps ensure that poor students of great promise have access to great schools, maybe that would have made the difference. </p>
<p>I can’t entirely blame NYU – I’m sure they love the rush of applicants – but I do think that they could be much, much more direct with students earlier in the process, explaining that unless they have a non-custodial parent or other family member able and willing to either make major annual contributions towards college expenses or able to get loans, that NYU will probably not be affordable.</p>
<p>Oh… oops. Cptofthehouse’s practical advice was post #21… not #10.</p>
<p>*USC has a great film program too, but you don’t see dozens and dozens of kids making postings desperately trying to make the finances work, because either USC has much better financial aid or doesn’t admit kids for whom they can’t put together a reasonably workable package. *</p>
<p>USC is need-blind and meets 100% of need…so you wouldn’t be hearing these stories about USC.</p>
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<p>The problem is that NYU’s financial aid practices are out of step when compared to schools that have similar profiles or prestige. Peer institutions in terms of desirability offer much stronger financial aid, whereas schools with policies and practices similar to NYU don’t have the same aura of prestige (i.e., they are not anyone’s “#1 dream school”). </p>
<p>It is that “#1 dream school” aspect that leads people to make self-destructive financial decisions. NY also has a private university called Pace, that is far less selective, and yet manages to give slightly better aid to it students. Pace is one of those places that admits 78% of applicants, and students who typically score below 600 on the SAT CR; US News ranks it as Tier 3. So it may be a safety for those who can pay the tuition, but its is not likely to be anyone’s dream school – so no emotional pull to make it happen or bust. And Pace actually appears to do a slightly better job of meeting its students’ needs, according to data on the college board web site:</p>
<p>[Pace:[/url</a>] (Tuition: $33,812) </p>
<p>Average percent of need met: 76%
Average financial aid package: $27,786
Average need-based scholarship or grant award: $22,683
Average non-need based aid: $12,252</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board]NYU:[/url</a>] (Tuition: $40,082)</p>
<p>Average percent of need met: 71%
Average financial aid package: $26,287
Average need-based scholarship or grant award: $19,120
Average non-need based aid: $6,683</p>
<p>NYU is ranked #32 by US News – the #31 school is Brandeis and Boston college is #34 (#33 is a public university, so I didn’t include it)</p>
<p>Here are financial aid stats from those schools:</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board]Brandeis[/url</a>] Tuition: $40,274</p>
<p>Average percent of need met: 82%
Average financial aid package: $30,398
Average need-based scholarship or grant award: $27,392
Average non-need based aid: $23,479</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board]Boston</a> College](<a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board) Tuition: $40,542</p>
<p>Average percent of need met: 100%
Average financial aid package: $31,062
Average need-based scholarship or grant award: $27,618
Average non-need based aid: $20,992</p>
<p>So you can see that NYU comes up short both when compared to equally ranked colleges, and even when compared to a lower tier university in the same city. </p>
<p>So that’s why it gets such a bad rap. </p>
<p>Just about anyone who needs aid and has the qualifications to get into NYU could do a lot better elsewhere. There are a small handful of NYU students who get very generous aid - the very top of their applicant pool — and for upper middle class families who don’t qualify for a lot of need-based aid anywhere, the differential might not be that great. But at the low end of the economic scale, the students who buy into the NYU “dream” are usually getting screwed. </p>
<p>And the tough part is that these are the students who will suffer the worst in terms of future career plans because of the onerous debt. They will not have sort of financial backing when they graduate to give them employment flexibility to make their career dreams come true as well.</p>
<p>Calmom…excellent post! </p>
<p>This part is especially right on point…</p>
<p>*The problem is that NYU’s financial aid practices are out of step when compared to schools that have similar profiles or prestige. Peer institutions in terms of desirability offer much stronger financial aid, whereas schools with policies and practices similar to NYU don’t have the same aura of prestige (i.e., they are not anyone’s “#1 dream school”).</p>
<p>It is that “#1 dream school” aspect that leads people to make self-destructive financial decisions.*</p>
<p>NYU is spending lots of extra money on publications. I think some shiny book showed up in our mail every week DD’s senior year. Thank goodness she wasn’t drawn to shiny objects.</p>
<p>NYU has never made claim to meet full need, so if you don’t want to go for it , then don’t. No one is holding a gun to ones head to go to NYU. It is always best to research the schools you are interested and make your decision based on what you can do comfortably. I do not disagree that NYU can do better with FA. I wish they would change some of their FA practices, I write the check every year, and I grumble when I do, BUT that is what we have decided and glad to do it. </p>
<p>What I don’t understand is the fact that another poster seems to be the self proclaimed expert on who and what NYU gives their students and really doesn’t know what she is talking about.<br>
I have mentioned throughout many of my posts that the average NYU student I have met in my travels with D, NONE are wealthy. No one has a rich granny paying the bill, as another poster claims. They all come from middle class families. I am sure, as with many other highly selective schools, you will have wealthy students. </p>
<p>You get what you pay for.
BTW, I am a Pace graduate.</p>
<p>For the OP, here is another HS Class of 2010 admit debating whether NYU is worth loans or a severe burden on the family:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/938497-am-i-being-wise-just-frugal.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/938497-am-i-being-wise-just-frugal.html</a></p>
<p>If as a parent you are willing to write the checks to NYU every year to fund your child’s education, that’s your decision. Presumably parents who post on this board are sophisticated enough financially to know what they are doing. </p>
<p>But these posts that keep coming up on CC again and again are from high school grads who do not have a parent willing or able to fill the gap. They have low income parents who do not understand the financial aid process, and they get accepted to their “dream school” with a financial aid award that is packaged in a deceptive way because of the mislabeling of PLUS loans as financial aid. To a young person unfamiliar with the aid process, it looks as if NYU is giving full need with a combination of grants and loans – and these kids don’t have a clue that the PLUS is a parent loan that needs to be paid back right away, or what kind of payments their parents would be facing. Their low income parents don’t understand either – they just are faced with a kid who thinks that their admission to their “dream” college is their ticket to a good life.</p>
<p>So you get someone like the OP who is not getting a dime from her parents – they couldn’t help even if they wanted to — if she manages to find someone to cosign a private loan, she might be able to get through a year or two at NYU – and then she will reach the point where there’s no one to cosign and the banks won’t lend any more in any case. And she won’t have a college degree – if she caves into financial reality after 1 year of college, she’ll have $30K worth of debt – if she manages to keep the house of cards standing for another year, she’ll have 2 years of college and probably around $65K of debt. If she managed to stick it out for all 4 years… then she will probably have around $130-$140K worth of debt, with only a bachelor’s degree to show for it. </p>
<p>Of all the NYU schools, Tisch is the worst in terms of the dream vs. crushing economic reality. Tuition at Tisch is higher than the other NYU schools, but the preparation the students get puts them into a notoriously low paying and hard-to-crack career track, in an industry that relies heavily on short term project-based contract and hourly workers. As far as film majors go – the only info I can find on the internet is a report that Tisch has a -0- career placement rate for its graduate level film students. Now I think that is simply a result of Tisch not collecting or supplying the data - I’m sure that the career placement is better than 0. At the same time, I am assuming that whatever it is, it is too low to brag about – or else they would publish their placement rates somewhere. </p>
<p>Now all of this is for an industry that doesn’t even require college degrees for entry level positions. And plenty of young people hungry for every single job opening that comes up.</p>
<p>I’d also point out that film students are likely to run into extra expenses as they pursue their major – this article from the WSJ gives some insight into the problems they are likely to encounter:
[NYU’s</a> Tisch School for the Arts Grapples With Tighter Regulations on Student Films - WSJ.com](<a href=“NYU's Tisch School for the Arts Grapples With Tighter Regulations on Student Films - WSJ”>NYU's Tisch School for the Arts Grapples With Tighter Regulations on Student Films - WSJ)</p>
<p>I have mentioned throughout many of my posts that the average NYU student I have met in my travels with D, NONE are wealthy. No one has a rich granny paying the bill, as another poster claims. They all come from middle class families. I am sure, as with many other highly selective schools, you will have wealthy students.</p>
<p>I have no idea of how your D’s friends pay their NYU bills.</p>
<p>But, I do know that you can’t presume to always know how/where families get their money to pay their kids’ tuition. And, sometimes the students themselves don’t even really know the facts.</p>
<p>I know that my sister tells no one (not even her kids) that their tuition is paid for by an inheritance from her MIL. I only know because I found out about the inheritance in an unusual way. </p>
<p>When my kids were in prep school, the accountant told me that 30% of tuition checks come from grandparents. I’m sure that many of those students had no idea that granny was paying their tuition. </p>
<p>It’s not unusual for a person in their late 40s or early 50s to have received inheritance money from parents/grandparents/single aunt/uncles. I received an inheritance a few years ago from a never married uncle who died. Would my kids ever say that their prep school tuition was paid with any of that? No - because it didn’t (directly). I put the money in savings, but knowing that it was there made it easier for me to pay their tuition from income. </p>
<p>Again, I have no idea how various people are paying their big tuition bills. I just know that you can’t assume that it’s all coming from the parents’ income and that the family hasn’t enjoyed some other sources of income at various points in their lives.</p>