<p>Step 1…you and daughter need to remove from your minds the delusion that state schools are inferior and less prestigious than private schools.</p>
<p>Step 2…you as a parent need to decide what is most important…dream location or a quality educational experience. Often, because of financial reasons, you can’t have both.</p>
<p>You have the right and obligation to edit her choices within reason. If you don’t believe that St Johns will provide the quality educational experience that she needs, then don’t pay for it. We all have schools that we would not pay for.</p>
<p>Seren, as I said earlier, the honors students at Hunter get first dibs on the Hunter dorms. Those dorm spots are all gond.</p>
<p>Yes there are turnarounds, but my belief is that finaid is minimal for these kids.</p>
<p>OP, you can say no to co-signing any debt. That will leave your DD with less options. You can tell her you will not sign debt, but will give her a summer in the city at NYU or Fordham. Both schools have programs in the city with housing for kids from other schools.</p>
<p>Up thread the suggestion was made that she go to one school for a year with the intent of transferring. This is very tricky, many schools offer no financial aid to transfers, you’ll need to do a lot of research. That said, anything is possible, but someone in your household will have to do a lot of homework.</p>
<p>I fully agree that William and Mary is an outstanding college. BUT neither of my kids thought Williamsburg was a place they wanted to live at for four years. Too sleepy for them.</p>
<p>That being said…as a VA resident, there are MANY other instate options. </p>
<p>I thought your daughter was waiting to hear from BU.</p>
<p>If your kiddo wanted an urban environment, then applying to affordable urban schools would have been good. </p>
<p>I have two relatives who went to George Mason, yes I know it is not in the category as Uva or W &M, but they both loved it. You can easliy get into DC on weekends. Its becoming less of a commuter school.</p>
<p>Long Island University of Brooklyn has a late deadline, urban environment, great proximity to Manhattan and might not satisfy her academic needs whatsoever. She might look at it, though, just as part of this exercise.</p>
<p>Did she look at SUNY’s program in Environmental Science and Forestry? I don’t know about late deadlines there. That’s downtown Syracuse. She could bus into NYC for a weekend.</p>
<p>My guess is she’d like BU as much as she imagines she’d like NYC. Lots of people resist BU because it’s “a sidewalk school.” She’d like that.</p>
<p>I know she won’t listen to anyone else but…My S also always dreamed of NYC, and got there in good form as soon as he graduated college. He turned down NYU Honors program to attend something more appropriate to his needs at a fine suburban LAC in Western Massachusetts. Two months after graduation, after regrouping at home with a summer job to earn just enough money to move in there, he boarded the bus and moved himself in to NYC. That was 5 years ago and he’s achieving his career and personal goals now; loves the city. HOWEVER, in his h.s. senior year, someone with a lifetime of experience in NYC (big broadway producer type) who knew him told him, “you have to be highly organized to handle NYC.” That comment hit home and HE decided he wasn’t yet ready, emotionally, for all that. I also said at that time: NYC won’t go away while you’re in college. It’ll wait for you.</p>
<p>And not to insult your D, but living in NYC requires the ability to size up situations in advance, then make your move and avoid costly errors. In this situation, you kind of rescued her (and good for you for doing that). That she’s bull-headed and stubborn, on first blush <em>seems</em> like a great personality trait to handle NYC. But, watching my son’s journey, I think now it’s even more important to learn how to do your research well. That city is so full of stimulation and opportunity, it can just spin you if you haven’t learned how to do that. Perhaps she can look at college as a 4-year preparation to move to NYC after graduation “for good.” That image might balance out her thinking today.</p>
<p>W&M is a very good school, heads & shoulders above St John’s. IMO, NYU is the most overrated school in the country and has no regards to the financial condition of students & parents. (take a look at all the threads about it - every year NY TImes has an article of a recent graduate with a ho-hm major such as 'Women’s Studies" that is $200+k in debt and can only find a job paying $25k/year that really doesn’t need a college degree).</p>
<p>Also I think it’s possible the OP doesn’t want to debate about the relative merits of the schools in question (which is why he/she started a new thread). I’m more interested to learn about the parent-child dynamics. The OP doesn’t have to pay for any school that he or she deems not worth the money and can stipulate any other terms. What would I do if I were in the OP’s shoes? I would sit down with my D to have a decision-making conversation and let her know that if there are any “hysterics” (D’s reaction to idea of gap year), the conversation ends until we can commence reasonably. </p>
<p>I’m also curious whether the OP had any hand in the creation of the D’s list of schools.</p>
<p>KP - Your Q from an earlier thread: “Is it really worthwhile to have a diploma from a brand name university?”</p>
<p>If that university is W&M, yes! Perhaps your D, as a VA resident, doesn’t understand what W&M is. I know that I didn’t while growing up in Northern VA. I went to Wake Forest since I thought I didn’t want to go to one of my “state colleges.” As I went on through my career as a university administrator, I became increasingly aware that W&M is a huge name in American higher ed. Most Americans believe it to still be an elite private school and are surprised if you tell them that today it’s a public university. I loved Wake, but I’ve always wondered why I didn’t give W&M more consideration. If you’re interested in a name-brand diploma, W&M trumps Wake Forest. I would say that it trumps NYU as well.</p>
<p>There’s no way that I’d pay a quarter-million dollars for four years of NYU. I’d take the merit aid at W&M and plan to do summer internships in NYC instead. Even with unpaid internships, the cost savings will be huge. IMO, the college experience would be better as well.</p>
<p>I agree that W&M is her best option at this point. You could point out that Jon Stewart is a alum, if that impresses her. :)</p>
<p>If she doesn’t like W&M, she could apply to transfer to Columbia after her first year. Columbia does provide excellent financial aid to transfer students. I have a friend whose son transferred to Columbia after his freshman year at a much-lesser school and had 100% of financial need met.</p>
<p>If she’s searching for new options right now, some outstanding schools will take applicants past the published deadline, so it’s worth checking out if she has one to which she wishes she had applied.</p>
<p>I would let her know exactly what you can afford and what you are willing to pay for. Then I would help her set out her possibilities as they are now. You are partly responsible for the position she’s in (you had to sign the ED agreement too, right?) but her stubbornness is a big part of it too-- so, she made these choices and this is where they’ve taken her. Then-- overnights-- W&M, St. John’s, and BU if it’s affordable. We all live like that-- doing the best we can among the choices we have. She’s got some good ones and once she actually spends a hunk of time at each place, her views will develop.</p>
<p>Truly, I cannot imagine a strong student picking St. John’s University over William and Mary based on what I know about the two schools, but reasonable people differ. The operative word here is “reasonable.” If the OP’s D has indicated an unwillingness to go to a state school, no matter how good it is (and no matter how good a bargain it is!), she is not being reasonable.</p>
<p>If this student really wants to go to an urban school, William and Mary should NOT have been on her application list. It’s an outstanding school but Williamsburg is not an urban setting. Sorry…it’s not. </p>
<p>My kids were pretty stubborn too. BUT we had the discussion about the TYPES of schools they applied to BEFORE they applied. They both went to schools in urban settings, one to Boston University.</p>
<p>At this point, it sounds like NYU is off the radar screen for financial reasons. Since you don’t know your other scholarship awards yet, get a plan B in place with the other schools in mind. AND plan C for what will happen if the “money doesn’t come” from those other schools.</p>
<p>Agree with others…there are many schools in the greater NYC area. If she REALLY wants to go to NYC, and finances are an issue, offer that gap year and the opportunity to apply to places that are affordable in that area.</p>
<p>OR as others have pointed out…summer program in NYC would be an option.</p>
<p>We know a student who transferred OUT of NYU to attend another school. She was going to be an Environmental Sciences major until she really looked at their course of study…it was NOT to her liking.</p>
<p>She’s lurching for any school just to live in NYC at age l8, while mentally dismissing other fine options elsewhere. She’s also hugely disappointed and grieving that NYU proved unaffordable. You sound just a bit afraid of her. </p>
<p>I think you both need to get over being upset before anyone can begin to think straight. A graceful way might be to take the other parents’ advice and offer school visits, to gain a new set of direct impressions now that NYU is off-the-table. IF she visited anything before, she was likely comparing it always to NYU, her dream-school. Now the landscape has changed.</p>
<p>You can show her how adults regroup whenever big disappointments occur.</p>
<p>I don’t really understand why someone would become hysterical at the mention of taking a gap year. It would provide her an opportunity to find more suitable choices since it sounds like her current apps are not affordable or they aren’t acceptable.
Taking a gap year to work/volunteer seems preferable to attending a school that is not affordable or otherwise unsuitable & hope that transfer applications will work out better.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why you have started another thread, since everything in the other one was pertinent to your situation. Usually, that means that the OP didn’t like what they heard. </p>
<p>Well, I’m going to reiterate more or less what I said in that thread: if your daughter goes to Pace or St. John’s in hopes of having some glittering NYC experience I think she will be BITTERLY disappointed. She will be attending a vocationally-oriented commuter school. This is fine for the right student. Not for her. She will not be surrounded by academic peers OR by hip and sophisticated Manhattanites, or whatever her “dream” is. </p>
<p>Ha she actually been to BU? I bet she’d love it, and Boston. If she is hellbent on NYC her best alternative is probably to take a gap year and apply to a more suitable list of schools, including Fordham, Barnard, and probably Sarah Lawrence (just outside NYC, VERY hip, and a MUCH better school than Pace or St. John’s).</p>
<p>Maybe St Johns rises to the level of “mediocre” in some people’s minds–not in mine-- Pace definitely does not. And if she thinks that NYU is more prestigious than W&M, she needs a reality check. As someone said upthread, most people outside VA think of W&M as a prestigious private school, and don’t even realize that it is a state school. And while we’re at it, UVA is also more prestigious than NYU.</p>
<p>Just curious, what’s so terrible about ST. John’s? I remember a top student of ours accepted a full ride there a few year’s back. I admit I don’t know if he stayed, but I’d love to hear your reasons. We often (on west coast) have kids who’ll do anything to get to NY.</p>