I’m just curious, how are some of you paying for Ivy League education. I just found out that the financial Aid at GS is not as good. I really want to accept the offer but I’m worried that it may not be worth it.
Where else have you been accepted?
Baruch, NYU, LIU Brooklyn.
okay. CUNY’s like Baruch offer good bang for the buck. NYU I’m guessing also doesn’t offer much financial aid. LIU Brooklyn is a solid school too, and one you might want to consider as a place to start and then transfer to a more prestigious place (if that’s important to you), depending on the price of LIU Brooklyn. Do not go into debt for that school, though.
Columbia College offers pretty good FA, but GS usually does not. GS and PENN’s similar program don’t tend to offer great financial aid. They are separate colleges from their other undergraduate schools. One thing you can try to do, after negotiating with GS and seeing what they will improve on, is to start at one of your favorite schools and attempt to transfer to a school that offers better FA.
Baruch is a really good school for business. If you’re interested in Baruch’s business programs, you may just want to attend there for all 4 years. 1) it’s cheap; 2) quality is definitely decent; 3) excellent contacts and networking ops in NYC/ Wall Street area. You could probably create a good career path with minimal debt.
You could also try Baruch for 1-2 years and transfer to another school, but there aren’t that many undergrad business colleges. you might as well stay at Baruch.
Or if you can afford this, you could start at Columba GS for one year, pay whatever it costs, and transfer to a top-notch undergrad LAC or university that promises 100% FA to all students. Schools like that include Vassar, Grinnel, Amherst, and the other Ivies. Below is a list of schools that claim ot meet 100% of need. Need is defined as the school decides to define it, ultimately, and each has its own rubric for that. But generally if you attend one of these schools they ask you to provide a portion of the costs, they provide a portion, grants and loans provide the rest, with loans averaging much lower than the national average. I think Grinnell’s average loan total for 4 years is like $16K while the national average is like $33K. You do have skin in the game, but it’s affordable. Sometimes schools have different FA guidelines for transfers as opposed to first year students.
You could also transfer to a top-notch LAC that provides 100% of need using your other admits too, it’s just that the schools might look at Columbia U classes in a different light than those of LIU Brooklyn.
Others who are better at FA questions may have other ideas. Whatever you do, try to keep your debt to a minimum. That’s key. If you are good enough to get an Ivy degree for undergrad, you’re good enough to be top of your class wherever you decide to attend, and you can save your cash for grad school. You will need it then. Top grades at undergrad plus top GRE/ GMAT/ LSAT or whatever, will get you into a top grad school, usually.
Also, you may want to take a year off and apply again, but this time apply to schools that meet full need. Vassar needs boys and several other LACs need boys. You might do well with that strategy. Best of luck to you.
GS is generally for older students. You may want to look at schools that offer programs for older students. Brown does. Yale Eli program is another. Reed is like an LAC version of U of Chicago in an Oregon setting. They are quirkly and welcome older students. Here is a list of schools (incomplete) that offer ops for nontrads–
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programs_and_colleges_for_non-traditional_students