I am paying OOS (incoming freshman) and Binghamton did not give me much financial aid. The housing also seems to be really expensive compared to other colleges. I do not want to pressure my parents too much about college money since I already have two older siblings who are eating away my parents’ bank accounts. Is there any possible way I can attend with a lower cost? I see that there are scholarships given within Binghamton but it seems they are only rewarded to a select few… I really do not want to resort to loans since the interest rates are so high. Please help!
You start class in 3 weeks and you are just figuring out the costs are too high now? What do your parents think? Are they still willing to pay the first semester bill, which are due now? You could work part-time during the school year (start looking into this as soon as you arrive on campus) and use money from summer job to help defray costs. You could also borrow up to $5,500 this year in federal loan. As for scholarships, you will have to check with your specific school–Harpur? to see what academic scholarships are offered to current (non-incoming freshman) students. Some schools may give small scholarship money to a few top achieving students based on first or second year grades. But not a whole lot to make much of a difference in total costs.
@trackmbe3 Is there really nothing I can do at this point? Could I try to appeal for more aid? I went to a very small high school in Virginia where sending students off college is not a high priority. I literally did not know much about how fasfa worked and all about the loans. My parents are of course telling me they are willing to pay for it, but I really want to help them. My parents are highly against me working my first year and tell me that grades are the number one priority. Are costs of attending usually the same for all four years? Or could I apply for fasfa again for my sophomore year?
Unless family financial circumstances have considerably changed you will not get more aid. You need to apply each year for FAFSA. You can get maximum of personal federal loan of $5500 freshman year, $6,500 sophomore year, and i believe $7,500 for junior and senior year. Of course you can also take out parent plus loan or private loans if your parents co-sign and agree to assume responsibility for repayment. Total cost of attendance generally increase slightly per year. You can get free room and board if you apply and get selected to be a Residential Advisor in a dorm. That would be a great way to help out in a big way. Or live off-campus after freshman year. Off campus housing is generally less expensive than the new dorms at Binghamton.
College costs increase each year, they don’t decrease. SUNYs were established to educate NYS residents, so unless your stats are really high, I wouldn’t expect a lot of aid. The best aid goes to freshmen, so I wouldn’t expect more next year. RA positions in the dorms are tough to get because many people would love to have free housing. You can’t count on that.
How are your parents paying now? If their income is too high to qualify for the federal Pell grant (which is what submitting FAFSA tells you), then you won’t qualify next year either unless their income drops. You can’t take any loans except the federal student loan ($5500). Are your parents taking PLUS loans to pay for this? If so, how much? Why didn’t you apply to a state school in VA? There are very good schools there and costs would be much cheaper.
@austinmshauri The reason I applied to Bing is because my parents are eventually going to move back to NY soon but not during my first year. The only reason I had to go to school in VA was because of my parent’s business.
Could I possibly appeal my financial aid? My parents have to pay off medical fees after my sister had an ER visit and they are already having a hard time struggling to pay for my older siblings in college.
This school is one of the cheapest for OOS. NYers subsidize OOS tuition. OOS students usually subsidize the in state students in most states. At least they are not subsidized by the tax payers of that state. But SUNY is…well you get what you pay for. The OP can cut costs substantially by living off campus and not in one of the over priced apartment complexes that appear to have been built to line the pockets of the previous university president who left in disgrace after her corruption was revealed. You could probably buy an entire house in Binghamton for what students pay for renting a place for 9 months a year. You could rent an entire house for the same price if you don’t want to buy. Families unfamiliar with the local housing market are taken for a ride.
I also think I messed up my FASFA profile somewhere… My family really does not make that much and I guess we would be considered “poor”. I’m just really shocked how little financial aid (more than half of the aid was just loans) they gave me considering my family’s income. All this time I’ve thought that financial aid was basically grants given from the school and never included loans… Once again, I went to a high school where they did not inform us much about college and financial aid since most of the students there do not end up graduating.
@facethetruth, How soon are your parents moving to NY? Is that definite? Check the residency requirements for Binghamton. It looks to me like you may be able to get in-state rates if you wait untilyour parents move to start college.
You *could[/] ask Binghamton to review your aid based on the medical costs, but any change probably wouldn’t be for much and it would likely only be for a year. I think if you start college as an OOS resident, you’ll be considered OOS for all 4 years.
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State universities often don’t have the money to give financial aid like that. The only way a state university would be able to award significant need-based aid would be if they charged much higher tuition. If the state legislature did budget enough for need-based aid, it would probably be targeted toward instate students.
Should I just withdraw then and try to go to school for January 2016 at an in state college? I am having a really hard time deciding what to do and I really do not think I can attend Binghamton with such a large burden.
You could defer a year. would they move by then?
Or you could apply to a new set of schools that offer a lower price for someone with your stats and family income.
Is there a school with a lower price?Certainly not for instate. I guess CC. I think tuition is about $3000 a semester. It is higher for out of state ($9000 a semester if no aid). But it is probably cheaper to attend Binghamton for OOS than it would to attend in state in some states. It is a cheap school. You get what you pay for but for most students it is fine. You can get a cheap diploma very efficiently. You may be able to shave off a year of you took high school classes while you were in high school. Also, you can lesson living costs by living off campus. You can probably find decent housing for about 300/month. It will be in the Binghamton area but so is the school so there isn’t much you can do about that.
We found that Binghamton OOS was the same as an NJ instate…so really it is an excellent value…Kiplingers agrees with me http://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/college/T014-S003-best-public-colleges-for-out-of-state-students/index.html.
Well don’t stay in the plush dorms. You could rent an entire house for what you pay for one bedroom in a shared apartment. The price of the residence halls is absurd for the Binghamton area. It is priced to appeal to the pocketbooks of down state students who roll in with their BMWs but you don’t have to pay that. The tuition itself could not be cheaper unless they start charging for using the bathroom. I would not put it past them but for now they are free.
Um, I don’t think res hall rates are usually correlated with the housing rates in the area, are they? If anything, I’d imagine the opposite – if a college is located in a low priced, dangerous area, of course people are going to pay more to live in the safe, secure, beautiful dorms.
Couldn’t tell ya Rebeccar. But People conflate tuition and rates for residential housing. They often do so when arguing that college cost have risen markedly. In the case of Binghamton, it is possible to disentangle them and pay a lot less. Housing costs can be reduced markedly by saying no to the inflated cost of the housing they offer. And, while yes there are low priced dangerous areas there, there are low cost relatively safe ones too-at least as safe as those offered by the university and also as safe as those offered by developments that partner with the university.
If you couldn’t tell, then why did you assert it?
No Rebeccar you asserted it. I did not. I’m sorry you didn’t notice that. As in “I don’t think res hall rates are usually correlated with the housing rates in the area, are they?”