@Coloradomama – your statements about Barnard/Columbia simply are not true – it is a safe and highly walkable area. And NY City subways are safe to travel. When my daughter graduated from Barnard she moved to the Ft Tryon area, around 190th street, and commuted daily by subway to a job in Brooklyn. While I am sure that your posts probably do reflect your sincere beliefs,your perceptions are subject to a bias --and one that is offensive to those of us who do not come from money and are sympathetic to rather than fearful of homeless people. In any case the comments are not at all helpful to the OP who has already posted that she is comfortable in innner city environments.
@Coloradomama
The Columbia football stadium is not at 168th street. 168 is where the Columbia Presbyterian hospital complex is, and the Armory track facility, where thousands of people take the subway and commute to work safely every day. The stadium is around 215th street, in the Inwood section of Manhattan and is considered fairly safe as it is rapidly gentrifying.
I’m not sure I understand your point about homelessness. While I don’t consider it racist, are you trying to suggest that homelessness equals high crime? Like your misinformation about the stadium location, that would be inaccurate too.
Coloradomama … one of my kids went to grad school at Columbia. She lived right by the school. It’s a wonderful area that in no way matches your description.
Just to clarify…I’m not saying the mom can earn the FULL cost of Barnard. But a second income WILL add some money that can be used for college costs.
It’s possible that OP’s parents are perfectly happy with the choices the OP will have based on the family’s current financial situation too. I couldn’t provide my kids with $70k per year choices, but I was okay with the choices I could provide without a second income, without selling assets, without borrowing more than the Stafford loans. That was my choice and others make other choices like the second parent working, taking a HELOC, borrowing. We don’t know what OP’s parents are thinking, but it may be that the UC/CSU options are just fine with them
@Coloradomama The homeless shelter information you provided are not shelters near Barnard. They are on the Upper West Side but 2-3 miles from the Barnard campus. One is very close to Juliard and Lincoln Center. I guess you better start warning all the opera goers.
That was my pie-in-the-sky suggestion based on $25/hour for an entry level employee in a city with a $15 minimum wage. Really… she isn’t going to get a $50 job. She’ll be lucky to find a $35K/year job, and that’s assuming that she has good English language communication skills. She may be a brilliant woman, but she’s got no recent work history and that means she is going to be looking entry level. And we have no information at all about the mom’s state of health; nor do we know how old the OP’s younger brother is, and whether the mom’s working would cause the family to incur additional childcare expenses.
The OP is entering her high school senior year- she had posted earlier that she planned to apply to Barnard ED this coming fall. Obviously since that time she has realized that ED isn’t going to work out financially.
While it is very possible that the mom may be able to take a job to supplement family earnings. I think it is insensitive to suggest that she should be required to, especially if that is only for the sake of a private education, given the alternatives available to California residents. There has been no suggestion that the cost of attendance at a UC would be prohibitive – it appears to be simply the differential between public/private.
Honestly, I wouldn’t want to be in the room if the OP were to go back her parents and suggest that her mom ought to get a job to finance her dream college. That is a decision for the mom to make, if feasible --and only for the mom to make. Not something that should be coming from strangers on the internet.
MD’s are required to work for 3-7 years as residents depending on specialty. Average salary for first year residents is $53K. Average salary for 6th year residents (in specialties such as neurosurgery) is $63K.
My point isn’t to discuss what MD’s make – it was a response to what I thought was a very unrealistic suggestion. I do think higher earners may have overly optimistic views as to the earning capacity of others.
For immigrant families, the lifestyle factors can be quite different. And there has been no suggestion whatsoever that the OP’s dad won’t be able to put her and her younger brother through college at an in-state public on his own 6-figure salary. (We know from other posts that it’s more than $99K; we just don’t know how much more).
As a parent, I understand why kids buy into the dream of a pricey public college. But as a parent, I also knew that I was in no way obligated to provide that. I did my part by settling in a state with a good public education system. Yes I did end up sending kids to private colleges with big price tags, but we weren’t paying sticker price If the OP’s parents tell her that their upper limit is the full COA for UC Berkeley … then they will be telling her exactly the same as I told my kids. The only difference is that my kids were eligible for and received more in the way of need based aid.
Students I know are affected by these city issues. There are homeless directly near student housing for both Barnard and Columbia. How would wealthy adults in NYC even be aware, they don’t live in student housing. Talk to students, is my suggestion. I do.
There is also a student hunger problem, that is not being addressed at Columbia/Barnard.
Its a serious problem in many east coast campuses. It may seems silly to adults who have pretty small chances of being homeless, but its not funny at Columbia.
https://www.columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2016/04/14/hungry-and-homeless-columbia/
@calmom DIL is a medical resident. The median salary for a medical resident is around $52K/year or about the same a high school teacher, but with 100 hour work weeks and no summer vacations.
But @Coloradomama, how is it that you talk to Columbia and Barnard students, but then don’t even know where the football stadium you malign is, or misidentify the location of shelters you post about? No one is saying that there aren’t homeless people in that neighborhood, but your posts are overly dramatic and contain lots of inaccuracies.
@twoinanddone Yes. Parents and students don’t always see elite vs public with the same POV.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
OK, let’s move off the topic of homelessness and Columbia/Barnard. And I say that not because the over-the-top OMG statements about the unsafeness of the Columbia/Barnard campus (or the 1 train) are inaccurate (which they are, at least compared to Manhattan as a whole), but because it’s off-topic and has moved into the realm of debate.
For the OP, a user cannot close a thread, and the moderators do not close threads on request.
That said, I think it would be helpful for the OP to start a thread in College Search & Selection to solicit ideas for schools that fit her parameters. This thread is getting unwieldy by offering college suggestions for you while also answering the question about hoe CA families in general afford college.
If the OP really wants suggestions, perhaps she can provide sufficient info to GET suggestions. That hasn’t yet been the case.
And please…I never said the mom HAD to get a job…I was just suggesting that if money is short for college…or anything else for that matter, another income might be helpful. But really that is a conversation for the parents…not the student.
This student is fortunate that she is a CA resident, with a large variety of instate public options. If the money ismthere WUE options might also be possible.
OP, I’ll tell you one thing: tens of thousands of kids around the country would LOVE to have the fabulous educational choices you, as a Californian, enjoy. Great schools in interesting areas, at in-state prices. Many write on this forum looking for ways to gain residency so they can go to a Cal State or a UC. You live in one of the more desirable states in the country, with access to some of the most desirable schools in the country. I know flagship Us that aren’t as nice as many Cal State campuses. Chin up!
But it’s not wrong for the OP to want a particular school. She’s found one (or more) that she really likes and wants to attend and asked a question about how anyone can afford it. She might even be forgiven a mourning period to let go of the idea since she just learned she probably won’t be able to afford any of the schools she listed way back in the original post.
We’ve all given some suggestions, and we all can think how lucky she is to have all the California choices. She just needs a little time to catch up with us and consider either the California schools or talk to her parents about the budget and distance, and think about whether she likes the city more, or the size of the school more, or perhaps the cost of a school.
What I hope happens is that she finds a school she really likes and is affordable and she forgets she ever wanted to go somewhere else.
My advice would be to retake SAT to get a better score - it will greatly increase your college options and may qualify you for better merit. Something tells me that math is your weaker score and your father should be able to help. Spend August doing pieces of the practice tests and ask your father to work with you in the evening on your weaknesses. This worked very well for my daughter who just graduated from college and moved to Harlem this weekend. Harlem seems to be quite trendy now.
CA Universities are a great option. They are widely regarded and very inexpensive. We are so lucky in the US to have so many options. Not only in terms of universities but in terms of jobs.
I think the point several were trying to make is, having a second person working reduces the debt load. Of course, the Mom may not want/be able to work for a variety of reasons. In addition, who doesn’t anyone ever mention having the kid work? I worked up to three jobs DURING college. And I worked every Summer all the time. I made enough money to pay for toiletries and other things during the year (like books). If the OP were my kid, I’ll talk about going halfway with him/her working Summers and during school and me taking out some loans. See how interested the kid really is. We do this a lot to gauge interest in our kids. You can find them weeding, doing household jobs and other tasks to get matching money for things. Plus working teaches kids humility. This is an important life skill ( which in my opinion, few people have).
Boy after reading what residents make I am really going to work on one of my kiddos who is interested in the medical field. Making 50k for years and working 100 hours a week. What? Plus the cost of medical school. Who is crazy enough to do that unless they get a full scholarship or tons of merit aid? Not many parents going to support that path. Not to even mention the risk that the kid becomes an MD and the medical system changes and MD’s now work for the government job or something else.
Just as an FYI the top kids coming out of undergrad in CS at Berkeley start off close to $150K at Google and Facebook and Amazon. The average overall salary for CS majors is close to $110K.
@Happytimes2001 I am with you on the med resident income. That is ridiculous. My dd with a 2 yr OTA degree makes more than that for her 40 hr work wk with work that gets left behind when she walks out the door for the day and she can schedule her own hrs within a daily 630 am-630 pm window.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek and @Happytimes2001 Yes, the salary of residents is low. But that’s temporary. Their lifetime earnings will certainly be a lot higher than an OT. The minute they’re done with residency, their salary will increase as much as four to seven times that amount, depending on the specialty. Medicine is the only profession I can think of in which your salary doesn’t rise gradually. You can go from $50k to $350k in one year.