<p>^So true, I can’t tell you how many sets of play money I’ve worn out going through that scenario with kids over the years! It’s so simple, and so effective, if they agree that the current local starting salary for their intended major is a baseline (and it’s hard for them to argue otherwise). Taxes are indisputable, a quick check of a newspaper determines the price of housing in any city across the US, then car expense, etc…usually they end up quickly realizing that a few hundred extra a month is more meaningful than it sounds if they’re not going to have money for food after their bills are paid!</p>
<p>Taxes are indisputable,</p>
<p>Oh yeah, forgot to mention those pesky things. LOL</p>
<p>Many students are not used to really paying much/any taxes and don’t realize that state, local, FICA, federal taxes can take quite the chunk of money for a single person with a decent income without much to deduct!</p>
<p>
Her first retail job – also for a major retailer - when she was still in high school was at minimum wage --but after she graduated from h.s. she applied for a retailer who paid better. She got the position over other applicants because she had retail experience. (Job #1 at minimum wage led to job #2 at above-minimum). While she was working an incident happened at work that led to my d. being offered a promotion to a different position that would have increased her pay further. She turned down the promotion because she was leaving to start college in a few weeks – but the point is that she would have likely seen greater increases if she had stayed on the job. Again… not huge amounts of money, but definitely above minimum wage.</p>
<p>Son had similar experiences. In high school he worked for slightly above minimum wage at a local pizza joint that was part of chain, and basically clowned around and was a terrible employee. But he observed others get promoted to assistant manager positions pretty quickly – about 6 months of steady, high quality work was enough. Later on, when my son had grown up a little and got his first “real” job after quitting college, he was promoted up a level within 2 weeks of starting. </p>
<p>I don’t think my kids are amazing or extraordinary. I think that the level of commitment and ability that employers see in jobs like retail or food service is often very low, and so when someone comes on the job who is reasonably intelligent, works hard and demonstrates that they are reliable-- they will tend to get promoted and get some sort of increase. </p>
<p>Again - not big money – I don’t think my son ever thought he was going to get rich at $22-$25K a year. When he returned to college he was highly motivated and his degree dramatically increased his earning capacity. But he was able to pay for his final two years at a public college on his own, without any additional borrowing. He could have borrowed – that is, he qualified for more Stafford loans – but he looked to his own resources (savings and earnings) first. While he was at college as a junior, he also applied for merit money at his college for his senior year – there are various scholarships that are given to continuing students. So for him, loans were the last piece of the structure. </p>
<p>It seems to me that the work experience / work skills is a piece of the puzzle that is left out for many students. I know many high school kids who are already earning a good deal of money, at very high hourly rates, because they have picked up valuable skills such as computer technical skills. And I know college grads with liberal arts majors who are falling back on those previously acquired computer tech skills because the jobs they can get with them pay more than the jobs available to them based on their degrees.</p>
<p>Hopefully other students next year will get search “hits” to this thread when researching NYU. NYU does seem to be big into loans. I heard of one case where a student was accepted in drama program (his #1 choice), but with $60K/year cost all loans. The family quickly moved on to other schools on the the list. </p>
<p>The original OP likely will attempt to follow his plan that most of us consider impractical and short sighted (even if we do admire his determination and youthful optimism!) </p>
<p>For the sake of future readers more open minded to the frugal approach, could somebody add a link to a good CC thread with list of colleges a cover full Need? (ie schools where EFC=0 translates to near zero cost, assuming the student meets admission criteria).</p>
<p>The problem is that there are no (or hardly any) colleges that cover full need where “need” is defined by the FAFSA EFC. All of the colleges that claim to meet 100% need apply their own formulae to determining “need”, not the federal formula. The few colleges at the top (Harvard, Stanford, etc.) are well endowed and generally even more generous than the FAFSA would allow, but the vast majority of so-called 100% need colleges will still often use calculations that leave a big gap between what the family thinks it can pay and what it will have to pay for the kid to attend. </p>
<p>Additionally, there are many colleges that do not meet full need in every case, but are generous with merit aid so that many students get excellent aid packages, even exceeding their need.</p>
<p>The problem with NYU is that it leverages its aid in such a way that it reserves the generous aid – the Presidential Scholarships - for only the top 5% of its entering class, and from there they make very little attempt to meet actual “need”. Instead they lump the students who qualify for need-based aid into various levels, and offer anybody within that level the same basic package. Right now I think it includes a grant of about $10K, whether the student actually needs $10K or $50K to make up the difference between their FAFSA EFC and COA. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that people who need a lot of aid shouldn’t target NYU unless they also feel that they are at the very top of the applicant pool – and even in that case they need to be prepared to walk away (since they may be mistaken in their assessment). </p>
<p>From what I know of NYU’s aid policies I think I can pretty much predict an aid package by knowing what weekend in late March or April the student has been invited to visit the campus.</p>
<p>Here’s a list of schools that meet need with no/low loans, with various eligibility requirements:
[Project</a> on Student Debt: Financial Aid Pledges](<a href=“http://projectonstudentdebt.org/pc_institution.php]Project”>http://projectonstudentdebt.org/pc_institution.php)</p>
<p>Many state u’s do a good job of trying to meet need for their own 0 EFC residents, through a combination of federal, state, and institutional funding. This is where good state aid and low instate tuition make a big difference - if the tuition is covered through state subsidies, Pell will likely cover a major portion of room charges, and the remainding expenses can be covered by institutional grants, work study, and Perkins or Stafford loans. It’s not a free ride unless the student happens to garner scholarships as well, but it’s a sane, workable package.</p>
<p>From what I know of NYU’s aid policies I think I can pretty much predict an aid package by knowing what weekend in late March or April the student has been invited to visit the campus.</p>
<p>Interesting! </p>
<p>Do they have a weekend that they invite the high stats kids and a different weekend that they invite the modest/low stats kids?</p>
<p>I was surprised to read that a rather modest stats kid was invited to a “scholarship weekend,” but now that I’ve read your post, it seems that those kids don’t really have a chance for $$, but are brought on campus to determine real interest and to sell the school.</p>
<p>They have a weekend that they invite the really high stats kids, and a second weekend that they invite the medium stats kids. I don’t think that the low stats kid get any sort of event. </p>
<p>It happens every year – sometime in late February or early March, NYU mails out invitations to applicants inviting them to attend one of the events. This is prior to an admission decision for RD students, but only admitted students get it.</p>
<p>The 2nd weekend event is not called a “scholarship weekend” – I don’t remember what they called it – but even though the invitation goes out in March, the weekend itself is in April after financial aid packages have gone out to most students. At the weekend there are financial aid reps on hand to talk to the students - and plenty of them – so for NYU, part of the purpose of the weekend might be to more effectively handle the financial aid protests and appeals. The financial aid rep my d. talked to was very courteous and direct – she told my d. exactly what she could and couldn’t expect from an “appeal.”</p>
<p>Here is MY deal. I got into NYU. Woo me!
But my private loan (~$10,000) got denied and my parents cannot pay. Btw I found out 2 days ago lol. SallieMae took 3 weeks to process my loan (denial)!</p>
<p>So now I’m looking at other NYC colleges that have not closed application deadlines yet. Like Marymount Manhattan College e.g. I know its not the same prestige… but I can save money for the first 2 years and then transfer back to NYU my junior year? Idk.</p>
<p>Being smart,</p>
<p>stohare2010</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>sorry, but this financial situation is pretty much hopeless. OP likely hasn’t even considered the dangers of the interest payments on 100k+ of unsecured debt. From private lenders, I fear OP would be lucky to find rates under 9%, which, by the time the OP is ready to start paying it back, is going to add tens of thousands of dollars onto the amount owed.</p>
<p>We’ll probably be seeing this person on a CNN profile of people overwhelmed with debt. Speaking of which, most of the people I’ve seen on those things with overwhelming student debt came from–big shocker–NYU.</p>
<p>I just hope that future applicants to expensive schools that don’t give good aid read this thread as a warning. </p>
<p>I also suggest that they read the “previous posts” of some of these kids when they were warned months ago that paying for these schools would be impossible. Repeatedly, they ignored warnings to apply to and consider safeties and affordable schools. They insisted that “no matter what,” they were going to ____, and that they would “borrow whatever was needed” to go there. Some even insisted that they could get a (aunt, uncle, friend) co-signer to help out. </p>
<p>This isn’t an “I told you so” to those kids, but a warning to the Class of 2015 who will be applying to schools this fall. Do not get stuck on a school that will likely be unaffordable. Apply to financial safeties that you’ll like. Don’t assume that there aren’t any other schools that you’ll be happy at. If you wait until you’ve hit a brick wall in the summer and find that there is no way to pay, you won’t even be able to go to desirable safety…you’ll just get stuck at wherever will take you.</p>
<p>I think there is just something in our American culture that has middle-class parents and their young adult children believing that they <em>can</em> afford a 50K college education. Or that NYU and such places are <em>obliged</em> to offer enough in grants, scholarships and loans to at least put themselves in reach of EVERY family.</p>
<p>There is a trap in that kind of thinking for many middle-class families in that taking out 20K+ in loans every year (100K+ by graduation) is financial suicide! Yet, because it is technically possible to get these loans and banks allow them to rack up 100K in student/parent-plus loans in a mere four years, parents and students, driven by this sense of entitlement-dream-fulfillment coupled by lack of any REAL knowledge of how crippling 100K in debt truly is, dive head first into the debt.</p>
<p>If I could create a banner to plaster on CC and stuff into college acceptance letter packets it would say something like “Some dreams come at too high a cost!” Or “WARNING: Your family probably can NOT afford NYU.” Or “The American Dream of a College Education starts with affordable tuition costs at Community College.” Etc.</p>
<p>Let’s just call it like it is…</p>
<p>For many middle-class families, NYU and other elite schools are LUXURIES THAT ARE UNAFFORDABLE. Taking out 100K in loans if a family can not support that level of debt doesn’t make it affordable. It is just irresponsible.</p>
<p>But families and students are so far behind the times because they are driven by some self-talk about deserving, wanting, needing, having earned, must-have stories that are out of wack with reality. “Education” becomes a holy object that can not be looked at objectively… They start believing their own hype that only a certain slice of education opportunities are “good enough” for themselves or their kids and then families get themselves into absolutely absurd and irresponsible amounts of debt to fulfill on that “dream”.</p>
<p>Or that NYU and such places are <em>obliged</em> to offer enough in grants, scholarships and loans to at least put themselves in reach of EVERY family.</p>
<p>Very true. There is a mentality that colleges are under some obligation to charge some kind of “sliding scale” so that every child can go there if desired/admitted. </p>
<p>If you can’t afford these schools either don’t apply or at least apply with the idea that they won’t likely be affordable and have a few good backup alternatives.</p>
<p>Stohare,</p>
<p>Will you be able to afford Marymount Manhattan and do they still have financial aid funds available? It is possible to be taking applications still but have run out of funding $. I would call schools and ask about that before applying. No use wasting precious time and $ this late in the game to apply to schools that you can’t afford and can’t afford you.</p>
<p>annika makes some very good points…I’m just mystified by the number of people who think their kids “deserve” to go to schools they cannot afford. Do they also buy their kids cars based upon what they deserve? When kid moves to an apartment, will it be a luxury high-rise with a view? We all want the very best for our kids, but there are a plethora of great colleges in the US at every price range and it’s just irresponsible to jeapordize the entire family’s financial plan with this “dream school” approach. I tell my kids what our college budget is, from savings, monthly contributions, what the max is for loans that they will be responsible for, and advise them to love a school that will love them back…kids do not have a problem understanding this when it’s explained to them early, clearly, and without a lot of hand wringing over what they “deserve”.</p>
<p>^^^^</p>
<p>Very true…people apply to expensive schools that act outraged or upset when the schools expect them to pay for them. </p>
<p>I can understand when low income kids apply to full need schools. I don’t understand why anyone applies to pricey schools that don’t meet need w/o the means to pay.</p>
<p>I would like to know where the parents are right now, and why, when the financial aid package arrived, they did not let juliang23 know that this is not a feasible option. On May 1 she should have been sending her commitment to another school that everyone agreed was affordable.</p>
<p>My younger D wanted badly to go to NYU - it was her first choice! Thankfully (as far as I am concerned) she was trying out for BFA programs, and didn’t get into NYU Steinhardt. But even when she was trying out I told her it was highly unlikely that they were going to offer her enough money for it to be doable. This year when she applied to transfer from CUNY Brooklyn we had a constant conversation going regarding financial aid packages, what we could afford, and what her portion would be (i.e., an amount that she could feasibly earn during the summer). She is going to Smith in the fall - a very expensive school but one that offered her a very generous financial aid package, leaving us a balance that we can handle.</p>
<p>Parents need to behave like parents instead of leaving an 18-year-old out there scrambling to figure out a way to come up with $120 grand.</p>
<p>We’ll never hear from the OP again I suspect and perhaps the OP found their “four year funding fairy” and will come back and tell us “I told you so”, but the thread is a very good caution tale for families embarking on the path.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Hopefully, but I doubt it. There have been other threads like this in the past, including ones about news articles where NYU students who have gone into this situation with the same shining faith have ended up in horrible situations over and over just this summer alone. It might convince people who are more pragmatic but for others it just doesn’t seem to make any difference.</p>