<p>Just for fun, I went in CollegeBoard.com to check to see how many schools are in New York City (that is, the five boroughs). </p>
<p>Well, no, I didn’t do that, but I did find a list of colleges in New York City on Wikipedia. Some of them sound fake (“College of Insurance”) but there are still a bunch. It’s not like you either have to go to NYU or be banned from New York City for the rest of your life.</p>
<p>Yes, any student wanting to take the advice of a another student to “jump right in” to a mountain of debt… well, that’s their choice. I’d only advise that first they try to find at least one former student in the arts engaged with actually trying to pay off their debt. Ask them if it was worth it and would they do it over again if they had the choice.</p>
<p>I am actually married to an actor. He’s one of the lucky ones who has never had to do anything else for a living, now 35 years at it. He’s already a remarkable rarity in that. As rare --and unlikely-- as his case is, even he would have had to give up on his career a long time ago if he didn’t have the flexibility that came from being able to live on air for big chunks of time.</p>
<p>Young students just don’t have a clue what an actor’s life is like. Or maybe they do, but they latch on to the parts they like and live in denial about the hard stuff.</p>
<p>Wow…just reading this is scaring me, and it most likely is scaring any other wanderers off from accepting their number 1 choice. :/</p>
<p>May I offer an amendment to your post 'rentof2:</p>
<p>Yes, any student wanting to take the advice of a another student to “jump right in” to a mountain of debt… well, that’s their extremely stupid choice.</p>