no money :(

So my parents had money saved and long story short, it’s all gone. Basically, I just have to make the money up by myself. I’ve always wanted to go to NYU, but that’s a very expensive school. Especially when you have no money at all.
I live in New York so now with SUNY colleges being pretty much free and all, I might end up just going to the closest one, Stoney Brook University. I know I could get a job and pay it off even before college starts if I go to Stoney Brook. Could I figure out a way to pay off NYU? Or should I just go with the college that I could graduate being debt free? I’m a freshman and I know I have a while to figure it out, but I don’t want to get my hopes up if it’s not going to work out. Any advise?

NYU is incredibly expensive and has a reputation for giving poor financial aid. Go to Stony Brook, graduate debt free, and you can always move to NYC later on in your life. But honestly as a freshman it is too early to think about any specific college.

NYU is very expensive and does have a reputation for giving poor aid. You are a freshman… focus on HS. When the time comes you can research schools, including those that may give you merit. Don’t underestimate Stony Brook- it’s a great school and it’s affordable.

SUNY’s are great schools. You’re lucky to live in NY where you have that option! Our state school is costing us as much as SUNY out of state! You have time, but if you end up at a SUNY rest assured they are good school and very well regarded!

Stony Brook (note correct spelling, OP) is a great school, and you would be fortunate to go at little cost. NYU is unaffordable. Notoriously not generous with aid.

My parents and I couldn’t afford Syracuse so I ended up going to Stony Brook. Best decision I could have made. Ugly campus but a great university.

My son and I just visited stony brook. The only thing free is the tuition. Room and board plus very high fees bring the cost to around $17,000 a year. Do you have this much money each year or will you commute. Would you be eligible for any merit aid?

Keep your grades up. My guess is that free tuition is going to attract new applications, and admissions might get a little tougher over your high school years.

Working over summers to build a nest egg in high school is a great strategy. That way you won’t have to work long hours while in college which can make it harder to get the most out of your experience.

When you get to junior year, you can run the Net Price Calculators on college websites to see if you will qualify for aid at other schools as well. It’s not likely to be any good at NYU, but over time you can learn about other colleges.

I plan on commuting there since I live 20-30 minutes away so I won’t have to pay for room and board.

Go to the Financial Aid forum, and start following what @sybbie719 writes. She is one of our NY State experts.

Yes, NYU is known for lousy aid for most students, but it also can be extremely generous with certain students including those admitted through HEOP. What will happen to that program is anyone’s guess with the new NY policies.

Your will have the best chance at good aid for college if you have excellent grades in high school. So look at how well you have done so far, and think about what you need to do to finish with top grades. Talk with your teachers and guidance counselor about that too, so that you can get any help you need now with improving your study habits.

Wishing you all the best!

Take NYU off of the table. If they cannot afford it now, they will not be able to afford it 3 years from now.

Continue to do well in school, because you will be open to a lot of incentives.
SUNY will be come more competitive because of the excelsior scholarship program (free tuition).

If you graduate in the top 10% of your class, and want to go into STEM, you could be eligible for a STEM incentive scholarship

If you graduate # 1 your would be eligible for HESC academic excellence scholarship of $1500/year to use in NYS
there will be $500/year scholarships for other students.

On the free SUNY deal, here are the requirements as I understand them:

  • your parent's combined income has to be under $100,000. That single requirement eliminates every family I know where both parents are working full time. It's going to go up slightly in the next few years, but not enough to make a difference to most 2 income families.
  • you have to promise to live in NY for 4 years after graduation. If you don't, the "free tuition" becomes a loan at competitive rates.
  • the program includes only tuition, not room and board. So it's a savings of approximately $7,000 per year.

Here’s what I suggest:

  1. As other people have mentioned, keep your grades up. Merit aid may make the difference here.
  2. Don't discount Nassau/ Suffolk community colleges. You can go there for 2 years, transfer to another SUNY, and your diploma will have the name of the SUNY school from which you graduated. In the meantime, you're not paying room and board for those 2 years. Both Nassau and Suffolk have Honors programs that have good reputations.
  3. When you become a junior, start talking to your guidance counselor about your choices. For what it's worth, a number of kids in the high school in which I teach made NYU, but are unable to attend because of finances. It's a fact of life. And living on LI is a problem, because the cost of living is so incredibly high. What looks like a NICE income on paper doesn't translate into a lot of "disposable income"-- money for extras like hefty tuition bills.

NYU is easy to get in if you are top 10% of the class but hard to be affordable. Don’t give up dreaming the top Ivy’s HYP, if you get in, you may get a high merit scholarship in combination of FA that makes it an almost full ride. But you have to do some incredible ECs to make it, in addition to excellence in academics.

Ivy League schools do not give merit scholarships.

Artlovers- where are you hearing that NYU is “easy” to get into for top students? That seems to be a misnomer. This years admission stats:
https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2017/april/nyu-s-accpetance-rate-drops-to-lowest-in-16-years.html

And gentle reminder, the ivy’s DON’T give merit scholarships.

Cross-posted with twogirls

I am commenting NYU is easy to get in in comparison to HYP and the equivalent. A lot of kids in my family got into NYU but did not go, instead, they went to Stanford, Chicago, MIT, Harvey Mud, Ucb and such.

Times have changed. While the admission rate for NYU may be higher then the elites, it’s still about a one in four chance of admission ( and of course stronger students generally have a better chance than less strong candidate) . By the time this student is a senior who knows what the admission rate will be.

Op, do you know your EFC as of now? Would you qualify for HEOP?

in any case your best odds if you want choices is to work summers and save the money, get good grades in a rigorous curriculum (4-8 AP s total or IBD or dual enrollment), prep for the SAT and not take the test cold, hopefully preparing the PSAT over the summer between sophomore and junior year in order to have a shot at national scholarships.

NYU has a number of divisions, with vastly different acceptance rates. Stern is very selective, as is Tisch (with variations among the different artistic disciplines). I believe that the STEM school is also difficult to get into, but the College of Arts & Sciences is not nearly as selective.