<p>So, Voice Teacher brought up some good points, as well as concerns some of us might have if our kid is heading to NYC in the Fall. </p>
<p>One of my d's friends only made it through the first semester before she spent most of her savings on shopping and socializing, and her parents pulled her out; this was a very responsible kid previously.
Obviously once they are 18, we are supposed to give them their wings and let them fly, but I don't want my d to be one of those who fly back to the nest.
We are working on a budget with her, and making sure she understands that if she goes through her "fun fund", there will be no more. We are stressing the importance of why she wants to be there in the first place. She has always been a focused kid, and a good student... But like, dare I say most, teenage girls, she likes to shop, and NY is a baaaad temptation for that and other things, like her student discount at Capezio and Broadway show tix, lol
I'd love advice from current NY students on how you made it through your freshman year and not succumb to the glitz and glam of the city. I know she will have a heavy class load and that will help, but beyond that, all tips are welcomed.. :)</p>
<p>I raised my kids in NYC and we are decidedly middle class. There are plenty of opportunities to spend money in any city so I think the general rules apply here too, if they have a credit card it should have a limit, if you send them money it should be a set amount and they have to decide how to spend it every month. If they run out, they’ll learn from that. This is what I did with my kids living here. They have lots of rich friends so it’s tough but we had to make them understand that, sadly, they weren’t born into one of those families. Sounds like you are doing the right thing Lulusmom2 by talking about it ahead of time. I work at NYU so I see these kids all the time, most of them handle things pretty well but I think having clear guidelines from the outset is the key, though not a guarantee.</p>
<p>An honest discussion with your D should be held prior to her arriving in the city. This, in my opinion, is important for every student headed off to college, not just those who will be attending NYC schools, and not just theatre kids. Decide what amount of $$ is going to be available on a weekly or monthly or semester basis for extras. We did this and my D found that some weeks she spent more than in others depending what was going on.</p>
<p>You’re right that your D will be busy with school commitments but even for the busiest student, there is still free time. One thing that we felt was important was the opportunity to see as much theatre as possible in her college years. This had been a part of her life since she was a very little girl and at this point in her life, we felt that it was a part of her theatre education. Seeing live theatre, and lots of it, is important for these kid. Most of them will have been experiencing live theatre on a regular basis all through their high school years and for them to be in the centre of the theatre universe, it would be such a waste not to take advantage of that.</p>
<p>Students there have that amazing perq and should all see as much theatre as possible. It can often be done very inexpensively and, thus, can be budgetted into a student’s fund for extras. In the four years that my D was at school in NYC, she saw virtually every show that was on, off, or off-off Broadway, and felt that it was an important part of her education. </p>
<p>Will there be kids who don’t budget effectively? Sure but chances are good that those kids would have had the same issues at any college they attended, maybe just in a different way. The city as distractions but it’s not unique in that regard. I disagree with the comments by VoiceTeacher that it’s a mistake to do undergrad there. Thousands of students do it every year and have no problem keeping their focus on their academics. There are irresponsible and unfocussed kid at every college but it doesn’t mean that that is how your student will handle things.</p>
<p>alwaysamom - I agree with everything you said 100%. My D is finishing up her sophomore year in NYC and has also seen an incredible amount of theatre - Broadway, off Broadway and at most of the colleges within the city.</p>
<p>During D’s freshman year she had a couple of roommates that burned through about $300 plus per week just on shopping and going out. My D is responsible for her “fun” money and works hard during the summers to earn that money that she budgets for the year. Since she is in an apartment this year she does a lot of cooking for herself since it is something she enjoys when she has time. She is a vegetarian and eats very healthy and the costs for food this year are so much less for me than when she was on a meal plan. I send her a small giftcard each month so she has a bit of money to buy herself something new to wear.</p>
<p>I think it is important to sit with all kids before they leave for college and talk about budgets and how much they will have to spend as well as expectations of who is providing the spending money. My younger D will also be heading to NYC this fall (not a MT kid) and we have already started talking about the temptations to go out and spend money there.</p>
<p>On a side note - my D’s have grown up in a very affluent area of Southern California in a middle class family. They were already use to classmates having much more disposible income than they have.</p>
<p>Thanks for the good advice!.. Every one of you make excellent points, especially about the lesson learning the first time she breaks her bank. I also agree that theatre should be a big part of her fun fund as it is part of her education.
I was admittedly surprised to read Voice Teacher’s comments, but it is a good point. Still, its true the new freshman is going to face responsibilities everywhere, not just in the city. Keep it coming!</p>
<p>This is my D’s first year at NYU. She is a second year transfer and is in an apartment-style dorm with a full kitchen - so no meal plan, she shops/cooks for herself. The only “fun money” that my daughter has is whatever she earns in one of her part-time jobs. She is very conservative with her spending as she knows she has x amount of money coming in each week. She also relies on money that she earned/banked working full-time in the summer. She has been able to go to a number of shows this year inexpensively with discounts from school. But there are many that she has had to miss because she couldn’t afford it. She also will go out to eat with friends for the social aspect, and wil fill up on food in her apartment then go out and and just order a water or a small salad at the restaurant. It is tough. She also buys most of her groceries with her earnings. She got a Trader joes’ giftcard for Christmas. And whenever we take a trip to NY we bring boxes of food, because it is so much cheaper at home. The food in grocery stores in NYC is incredibly expensive! I can’t imagine how people are able to feed an entire family with the cost of food there.</p>
<p>Regardless of location and even major, a college student’s budget is a major concern. My parents never handed me a cent to spend; they helped pay for tuition (which I actually paid for myself this year), room and board, my meal plan and that was the extent of it. If I want new clothes, tickets to a show, go out and eat—it all comes out of my pocket. I’ve slowly taught myself how to save money and what I need to buy and don’t!</p>
<p>Song Searcher, that’s what my parents did with me; they paid the tuition for the most part but I had to earn my extra expenses money. I did pretty good I have to admit. I’ve tried passing that along to my kids, and am hoping they have been listening. Good for you for being responsible!
I do think it’s a necessary rite of passage though, and some will either sink or swim. NY just brings a leetle more temptation to the table then my small college in the country did, lol</p>
<p>Lulusmom2 - If your D ends up in an apartment type dorm versus a traditional one have her shop at Trader Joe’s. The grocery prices at Trader Joe’s in NYC are exactly the same as at all their stores nationwide. My D does the bulk of her shopping at Trader’s and avoides the expensive stores like Whole Foods (aka “Whole Paycheck”) unless she needs a specific item she can’t get at Trader’s. There are two Trader Joe’s in the city. One is close to NYU and the other is on the Upper Westside.</p>
<p>To see shows my D always does the student rush or tries for lottery tickets. She is also lucky and gets many discounted tickets through school. There are also some student ticket services she belongs to and has been able to see a couple of Broadway musicals and many plays for only $5 or $10! She gets same day tickets for the opera at Lincoln Center for $25. She takes advantage of the free days at all the museums she loves or does the “pay what you can.” She loves to go to the NY Public Library or the Library at Lincoln Center. She also takes advantage of living close to Central Park and loves to sit and people watch there or go for a run. Other free things to do are walk across the Brooklyn Bridge or go to Highline Park in Chelsea. She has taken the Path train to New Jersey for $5 (roundtrip) to go to Carlo’s Bakery (cake boss) and has taken the ferry to Staten Island to meet her friend who is in college there.</p>
<p>Thanks! We are a Trader Joes family so I will make sure she knows exactly where the two are located :)… And all your other tips are great too!. She will be at Pace so she’s right by Chinatown and will prob eat there often too, lol. This coming year she will be in a reg dorm, but who knows what the next years hold? My one worry is the Starbucks on every corner and the fact that I think they can use their meal card at some surrounding eateries. That could get depleted fast if she spends it on Starbucks!
Thanks so much for this advice… I am going to show her this thread… Keep it coming!</p>
<p>My son’s dorm at NYU is right above Trader Joes! He’s in Palladium at Union Square. There’s also another store across the street but I can’t remember the name of that one.</p>
<p>It is true that kids will spend less money at a rural/suburban school… but they usually also spend more time getting drunk because there is nothing else to do.</p>
<p>Young folks do not get drunk because there is nothing else to do - they get drunk because they are experimenting, because they are away from home and can experiment - this happens in LA, NYC, and Toledo. Every person is a special case with varying levels of studiousness, judgement, maturity - so it is hard to make blanket statements. Having said that - I do believe NYC offers a unique set of over-stimulation for a MT student and, therefore, has the potential to be a significant distraction for many folks. I think it is a valid concern, but an individual choice. For me, I would visit a lot, see the shows, take classes during breaks - but not attend undergraduate school in the city.</p>
<p>Of all the things to worry about, partying is at the bottom of my list. Because we never made it a big taboo, but stressed limits and responsibility, my older two kids have never been big partiers. They will have wine with dinner at home once in a while, for example. My college room mate on the other hand, went hog wild because she was so restricted. I don’t want this to sound like I condone underage drinking, just think the way we have handled it has helped our kids respect it more.
I am kind of surprised at the anti NYC opinion. I think kids that are heading into the performing arts fields are already very focused kids as a whole. They have already sacrificed much to rehearsals, dance, acting, and singing lessons, etc. if they are 18 and still want this in their life, they hopefully have the same focus to be ready for college in NYC. Some are ready to go straight to auditions without the diploma.
My worry was budgeting, etc. but I know my own d’s voice coach has stressed the opposite to her; that the closer to NY, the better, for all the city has to offer her.</p>
<p>My daughter is at NYU this year as a freshman, and I have been very proud of her choices. Taking 12 classes as a VP/MT major does not leave her a lot of time for fun, but she is happy doing what she is! She prides herself on being thrifty, so we left the budget open-ended fall term with the request to keep track of what she spent, and then when she came home in December, were able to sit down and together draw up a budget based on reality. We had purchased a full meal plan, not knowing what she would have time for, and discovered that a smaller one will work better as she prefers keeping breakfast in the small fridge in her dorm and occasionally just grabbing a sandwich for lunch, which is much cheaper than grabbing a sandwich from the cafeteria! She has a part time job and knows that covers new clothes and theatre tickets and other goodies. </p>
<p>One thing I would recommend doing is having a real honest discussion of drinking alcohol at college. My daughter, unfortunately, ended up in a suite with her two suitemates, not her roommate, being heavy drinkers who were constantly bringing alcohol back to their room. After reading the dorm policy, which hinted at suitemates being culpable, she had to summon up the courage to mention it to her RA just to keep herself covered. Apparently, getting alcohol in NYC is not difficult! 2 roommates moved out, leaving the worst drinke,r and a bulimic moved in. So now, she needs to talk to the RA about that. Apparently, a current problem in school is girls who don’t want the calories, but want the liquor, and bulimia is the chosen way of dealing with that! However, there are departments of the health center to deal with those issues, so hopefully that will be followed through on. In fact, I have been very impressed by the responsibility and communication that NYU keeps up with families and the services provided by the health center.</p>
<p>There are numbers of kids, of course, who don’t drink, and my d has been comfortable going to a few parties where she just drinks pop, altho doesn’t like observing the behaviors that sometimes ensue. She has never felt pressure from anyone to join in . . .</p>
<p>You’re going to find these difficulties at all schools. I remember being in a Colorado school where wealthy students actually flew friends to NYC for pizza over a weekend. I think we do our kids better favors by discussing with and equipping them to deal with the challenges and temptations rather than avoiding them. Freshman year is a time of big change where the opportunities lie to figure out exactly what one is capable of!</p>
<p>I can’t imagine my S who is a Soph at Fordham LC living anywhere else and in hindsight I wonder why he even applied to ANY school out of NYC! He is thriving with Dean’s list grades, wrote and produced two one act plays and is currently performing in The Crucible.</p>
<p>He also juggles a part time job; was “randomly” selected to serve on the SAG nominating committee which meant that for months, he and a guest screened movies prior to their release followed by Q & A’s with the casts; he student rushes plenty of theatre; goes to museums and of course, nearby Central Park; he spent one Saturday in Coney Island and other days in the Rockaways at the St. Patrick’s Day parade or at the beach; and he likes to go ice skating (free except for the rental) in Bryant Park. He also has many friends who are working theatre professionals so he’s gone to several events with them…bottom line is yes, there is a lot to do in NYC and he hasn’t been able to do everything he wanted bc of both time and money but he’s done quite a bit and enjoyed every minute of it. Do I consider that a distraction? No. I consider it a different lifestyle than someone might have in a typical college town. But undergrad in NYC a mistake? I disagree. Maybe for some but certainly not for my S! </p>
<p>I think that no matter where you send your kid to school, they will have to deal with something when they are on their own. Some kids party too much, others skip class or spend too much, there are issues with roommates, etc. It’s all part of the growing process and they have to learn how to handle these situations and to set limits for themselves. And each family/student will have to figure out their own idea of appropriate. For example, right now we are facing a situation where I am pretty sure that some of my S’s food allowance $ (there is no traditional meal plan at Fordham LC) is being spent on entertainment so we will need to make an adjustment. I am thinking that
perhaps some gift cards to Trader Joe’s and Western Beef instead of transferring cash into his account might be in order.</p>
<p>The other comment of VoiceTeacher’s from the other thread that I would like to address…and this may just be how I read it…but it is the implication that working NYC theatre professionals with a high level of success don’t think much of the NYC schools. While I am certain that there might be some who do think that way, I can also attest to the fact that others think differently. My S was a professional child actor and had the benefit of meeting and becoming friends with so many working NYC professionals. His Tony nominated mentor among many other of his very well known and award winning friends were there throughout my S’s college decision process and none of them told him to get out of the city.</p>
<p>I think it is perfectly normal to have some concerns about sending your child off to college. Just bc the school happens to be in NYC does not automatically mean you have more to worry about! Best of luck to your D, Lulusmom2! :)</p>
<p>Thanks soozievt! sandkmom- your son sounds a lot like mine. I will also add that at the end of my son’s first year at NYU, he came home with a stack of Playbills. He said he didn’t pay to see any of those shows! I also texted him one Sunday night to ask why he didn’t check in with me (this was early in his freshman year and I only asked for a weekly check-in). He texted back that he was going to a show at Upright Citizen’s Brigade. A half hour later, he texted and said that a bunch of current and past cast members of Saturday Night Live were performing that night! He would not have gotten that if he hadn’t been in New York! Sometimes, I have had to strongly encourage him to see a show and to take advantage of the city because his primary focus is school!</p>
<p>There are many MT schools outside of NYC that are going to offer lots of opportunities to sidetrack students. Texas State, for instance, has a widely accepted reputation throughout Texas as a party school (I believe that they have made some national “party school” lists). The school is in close proximity to Austin and San Antonio, both of which have “party districts” that tend to draw students like moths to the flame (4-6 St’s in Austin and the Riverwalk in SA). The Highland Lakes and Guadalupe and San Marcos rivers offer well-established, very popular weekend party scenes (and its warm enough to hit the water throughout most of the school year in Texas). And so on and so forth. All that said, I doubt that Texas State is much different that many other large, state schools located in college towns in areas with lots of external recreational and entertainment possibilities.</p>
<p>I would not hesitate to send my DD off to school in NYC because of possible distractions any more than I would in sending her off to someplace like Texas State, FSU, etc.</p>
<p>Thank you so much for all the fantastic advice on here! I feel much better about her going than I did before. I also feel better knowing I am only an hour away if she needs anything and we also have friends and family in the city, two of them NYPD. So that takes off some stress too. My one friend is going to “mentor” her some for the first two weeks, to help her get adjusted to the change. And we will continue to discuss the budget,etc. thanks for the meal plan tip; she would prob be ok with a smaller meal plan for the same reasons.</p>