<p>he’s at 170 east 3rd street, you can google map it and see how close to NYU it is!</p>
<p>My brother figures at some point they might pay him to give the place up, but so far that hasn’t happened.</p>
<p>Last year my son was in 26th street, bunk beds and all, I figured for his last year, he earned the priviledge of having his own room for the first time in 3 years.</p>
<p>I still can’t believe this is his last year, time just flew by! I tell him that you get lots of ‘do overs’ in life, but you will never get to repeat your college years. this has truly been a live changing experience for us and we are very grateful to NYU that they were so generous to us. He’s got a real internship this semester and is taking the Foreign Service Officer exam soon. He’s double majoring in politics and history. He’d make a great politician someday, he likes to spend other people’s money!! Alas, he’s a liberal elitist :-(</p>
<p>My D lives in walking distance to the Lorimar stop. That is just two stops from Manhattan (on the L) and no changing of trains. She is just four stops from Union Square, so she lives like ten min. away. She rides the subway at all hours. She may go into Manhattan more than one time in a day. If she lived so far out of the way, she would not have clients coming to her apartment (whom she coaches privately) or like tonight, she has a singer/songwriter forum she initiated and hosts each month at her apartment. All the young people coming are via subway. Again, the length of time by subway to where she goes in Manhattan for her jobs or when she was attending NYU (and some of her jobs are even at NYU), is no different than if she lived in certain NYU dorms in the financial district or lived a few subway stops in another direction within Manhattan. Likewise, as someone with several jobs, rehearsals and auditions, it is the norm to have to use the subway and not be able to walk to every single thing she goes to in Manhattan no matter where her apartment was located.</p>
<p>A significant reason for living in Brooklyn is she has to support herself and the rent is cheaper and she gets a lot more apartment for the money.</p>
<p>As far as parking goes, we go to visit her when she is performing and we stay at her apartment (she has a sleep sofa) and park our SUV on her street with no problem and no cost. </p>
<p>When she has had to transport her keyboard, she has called a taxi service to pick her up at her place.</p>
<p>My daughter is in Manhattan just about 7 days per week and many of her nights as well.</p>
<p>“It’s not only expensive, it’s boring. I know because I went to college in NYC. I was bored to tears.”</p>
<p>Wow Plainsman! I grew up there; Birth to 17 in Queens and Brooklyn, 24-28 in the Bronx. Hard to imagine being bored. Broke? Jealous? Stressed? Glad to get out? Absolutely! But bored?</p>
<p>I must admit, my D’s life the past 5+ years in NYC has been anything BUT boring. It is chockfull every waking hour. This is a kid who grew up on a dirt round in the mountains where she could not walk to anything and our town has 1700 people (her freshmen dorm at NYU had almost than many people, LOL).</p>
<p>Bummer about the price of the metro card going up. I just gave D money to renew her card for the next 30 days. D has been in NYC almost a month and is loving everything about the city. </p>
<p>Her only complaint this week was that the busses were running late in the morning because of the UN General Assembly. D takes the bus to dance class each morning because it is easier than the subway to get where she is going from her dorm. Otherwise she rides the subway alot. Right now she has been walking from her dorm to school which is 16 blocks and some days she does this twice. D said that once it is cold she will ride the subway, but as long as the weather is good and she has the time she likes to walk.</p>
<p>Plainsman can speak for himself, of course, I don’t know what his specific experiences were.</p>
<p>I was anything but bored when I lived and worked in Manhattan as a young professional. But when I was in graduate school there before that, actually I was kind of bored, now that I think about it. Of course I was busy with school, and working there, but socially I was bored. The program was such that the students didn’t live together or anywhere near each other, many students were married, nobody hung out there, and I basically met nobody there in the school to hang out with.And I was using every dime to pay for the program, I really had no money. There was no magic in exploring the city, since I grew up just outside it and knew it already.</p>
<p>No matter where you are, if you are alone you can be bored. Particularly alone with no money.</p>
<p>Later on there I had the time of my life, I loved living in Manhattan. If we could afford to live there now we would.</p>
<p>Re housing costs: My d. is paying roughly $500 a month with a shared apartment in Washington Heights – she has her own room. I think the room must be pretty small because she shares with 2 others, and the reason her rent is low is that it is based on square footage. I wouldn’t say its easy to find rents that low, but its possible – though probably not by renting on the open market. (More along the lines finding a spot by word of mouth).</p>
<p>As for her expenses during college, I’m sure they were a lot – but I didn’t pay them. She always worked multiple jobs and definitely had the idea of connecting earned money to spending money. She had work study, she bartended, she babysat, she did paid research & writing for profs, etc – anywhere from about $8-$22/hour. She did not have a meal plan after the first year. She was on need based financial aid at her college, so it didn’t really matter to me what the room cost was. It was high, but if it had been less, then her grant would have been reduced accordingly – when she studied abroad that is exactly what happened. But I didn’t supplement the school’s financial aid – I strongly believe in NOT paying for day-to-day expenses so as to avoid the inevitable parent/child conflicts over money. That is, I didn’t want to be in the position of having to argue with her over whether she needed a new pair of boots or whether she could afford to go to the ballet.</p>
<p>I live in NYC and go to NYU as a graduate student now. It is VERY expensive to live here and go to school here. I moved here from Florida. One big differernce here is the cost of FOOD. OMG the grocery stores are VERY expensive here (No Winn Dixie, Kroger, Publix, ect here with BOGO or 1/2 off - everything is full price and name brand). I spend like $100 a week on food (thats mostly subway and sandwhiches and chips). </p>
<p>Another expense is the metro card - $89 but they are getting ready to bump it up to $104 or something according to the news. I just buy per trip because I live in a dorm on campus - its $4.50 round trip. </p>
<p>Yeah, dorm is another thing. Graduate students get ripped off for dorms. I pay $13k for 9 months to SHARE a studio BUT my backyard is washington square park and I live next to the library. You pay for location here. We pretty much pay $2,800 per month for a studio. Commuting is NOT something I would recommend… everyone I know communiting from NJ, Queens, Upper East Side HATE IT!!! Its expensive and takes hours. Its worth paying a couple hundred extra dollars for the location and extra hours sleeping.</p>
<p>Overall, dont go to school in NYC unless you have a really nice scholarship (I got a half scholarship for grad school). There are expenses here you dont expect and it is far from cheap.</p>
<p>I have to say that after looking at this thread, I’m seriously looking at moving off-campus as early as next year (I’m a freshman). At first I thought the convenience and assurance of knowing I’d have a place to stay every year would be important, but after a few weeks here, getting a hang of the physical distances involved, how much time I’m spending in the dorms, getting to know the subway, etc. and after doing the math… I’m pretty sure I could make living “off-campus” work, and have a couple grand more every semester than I could have otherwise. That money adds up!</p>
<p>Other than that - I’ve been remiss in keeping track of my expenses, but my bank account is not dwindling as quickly as I thought it might. I have a(n awfully overpriced) meal plan so most of my expenses so far have been either incidental, or big-ticket items planned for ahead of time. Lifestyle definitely makes a difference.</p>
<p>Researching that option is good but there are a couple of things to keep in mind - once out of NYU housing, you may find it difficult to get back in, if you happen to change your mind; unless you plan on staying in NYC during the summer, you will have to pay for months that you aren’t there or will have to deal with the hassle of a sublet. I don’t disagree that there are some good options for non-NYU housing but there is more to consider than a comparison of monthly rental v. NYU costs.</p>
<p>I know, and the additional hassle and legwork was what made me think I should just keep it simple and not complicate my life. I do plan on staying summers and going home winter breaks. However being here and getting a more concrete sense of the trade offs involved made a huge difference. Before I arrived I took a look through apartment rentals online but couldn’t put the numbers, details and locations in context. The idea also seems less intimidating now than it was before, when it was simply an abstraction. </p>
<p>I think there’s a larger lesson, too - it’s not <em>that</em> expensive, but tradeoffs have to be made and the tolerance for those tradeoffs varies by the person.</p>
<p>My D, now a sophomore, debated last year whether to start this term living off-campus and ended up in university housing this semester. She did not spend this past summer in NYC so it would have been complicated to get housing starting September and felt rather committed to her roommate friends. She regrets the extra money we’re paying for housing and is looking forward to moving out for second semester. She is planning to stay in NYC next summer so it will be nice to have a stable place and not keep having to move in and out. But it takes some planning and luck if you are going to find a place and not be there in the summer.</p>
<p>SallyNYU - are you saying that you spend $100 on food that’s from Subway and other chain take-out food places? You do know that you could pay less if you made your own or went to a local bodega/deli and not a chain, right?</p>
<p>I don’t live in NYC any more, so cannot comment on food prices. But many other races over here in California buy their groceries in Chinese supermarkets, its proven cheaper than the regular supermarkets such as Lucky or Safeway. There is an article in the newspaper states that a lot of Chinese or Oriental markets are taking over spaces that Regular Supermarkets vacated. And the Oriental markets here have started “American” sections to sell katchups, cheese, ham and hotdogs as such.</p>
<p>Perhaps those live in NYC should try out Chinatown for groceries?</p>