curious if you are an NYU student and paying your own way, would you do it again? My son has been accepted early and we have until today! to make our decision and its been a roller coaster. The cost net price calculator was way off and what we thought we could do versus what the aid was that they actual gave him, that is truly a useless tool. It doesn’t seem fair to have anyone take on that ominious debt when he has been given other offers of nearly free rides to equally great schools, but not in his dream location of NYU. We are encouraging him to go to the school of “not his dreams,” bank his scholarship monies and start his life in NYU debt free if thats where he wants to ultimately be…I really worry that letting a dream die will be like a death in his real world in all the same ways. However, he could have quite a few real dream experiences for the $250,000 price tag minus the very small aid award of $24,000 over 4 years. That’s nothing in terms of aid! Its truly dissappointing
NYU is a state school with private school prices and terrible financial aid.
Unless he’s accepted into a program unique to NYU (like maybe Tisch) then skip it.
Use the money you save to pay rent during the summer (sublet from NYU and Columbia students) so that he can do internships here.
Another idea: use $250K to buy a pied a terre or an efficiency when he graduates so that he can work here.
Another idea: he can attend CUNY schools here at bargain basement prices, get the same “ideal” location, with campuses (some of them) that look like Hogwarts, and have access to the same connections and networks of the city for a fraction of the price. https://www.ccny.cuny.edu/
Another idea: Attend Wagner College on Staten Island, Manhattanville college, Fordham, St. John’s (has a campus near NYU and in Queens) or Manhattan College or Marymount Manhattan, or SUNY Purchase, or Sarah Lawrence or The New School. Many of those schools will take a look at his NYU stats and give him good merit aid.
While you think about this, you couldmake the deposit to hold the place and decide later. You would have to forego your deposit, but you would buy some thinking time.
NYU frequently comes up in news stories about students and parents who are burdened for decades with insurmountable debt. We were very clear with our kids what the college budget was and that we would not even consider taking out loans like that for an education. What is it about NYU that causes you to even contemplate the cost? It’s not like the option is NYU or no college education whatsoever. And sometimes - dreams don’t come true. And life forces you to Plan B. Or Plan C. Buying dream houses that people couldn’t afford was a big factor in the housing bubble - buying dream college educations people can’t afford is just as irresponsible.
It’s hard as a parent saying no, but sometimes it’s our job. Work with your son on what is good about the other schools, and what options he will have if you’re not forfeiting his and your future for NYU. Will there be money to spend a summer in NYC? Or to study abroad? Or travel?
Many, many students turn down “dream schools” for affordable schools and still manage to lead happy, productive, successful lives. And are able to actually have more of a life than they would have if they were paying a significant % of their salary to pay down mountains of debt.
Going to a college he and you can afford is nowhere near comparable to “a death in his real world.”
The problem starts when 17 year olds have “dreams,” before they’ve left home, begun their real world experiences, developed their rational sides. It might help to view NYU as his former “top choice,” which is now shown unaffordable. He can vaction in NYC, spend his life there later.
A deposit to hold position to use for thinking, That wouldn’t make the early decision binding?
I don’t know all of the terms, of course, but if you can’t pay for the school becasue of poor financial aid, then you can’t attend the school. My understanding is that if the FA is not okay, then you can withdraw from ED.
If you’ve paid for the slot, however, with a deposit, they may get cranky. My comment was offhanded, mainly because I didn’t realize you were ED (should have with the timing, but I didn’t. Sorry for that).
Nonetheless, check the wording of the agreement you’re signing, if any, to see if you can withdraw but can lose your deposit. Losing your deposit is a Hail Mary move that may be able to buy you some time to consider other options.
Still: I strongly recommend not going into that level of debt for NYU. NYU is really not worth it. What it offers is high debt and location.
At the several other schools that I mentioned, you can get lower debt (and maybe zero debt!) and have location.
To me it seems to be a no brainer. Choose the less expensive options available in NYC.
We have been listing all the pros and cons…we have vacationed in NYU, his sister interned there this summer and live in NYU dorms and he has worked sooo hard his entire career as a student to get to this place and now its before him, but NYU makes it financially a nightmare to go to. Merit should count for more, it pains us to say no so we put the pros and cons of all the schools in front of him and are trying to educate him as to why he should say no to NYU. Also we have told him we could not give him study abroad opportunities at NYU we would be maxed out. So he is considering his non dream school, but the best offer so far…We were sold a lie we sold to him. We told him work hard and make school your career and you can write your ticket to any school you want. We not have to amend it to read – that isn’t a quarter of a million dollars? Merit should count for more. It takes quite a lot of dedication to be that student. He did all the right things to get to his dream. We can’t help but feel we aren’t’ doing our part now.
NYU Is not worth it - the opposite of a dream - a nightmare!!!
Also, you are putting all the options in front of him but if he chooses to go there he can’t take out loans more than $6000 per year in his name so YOU are agreeing to pay all of it. Its not just his decision, its yours.
Show him this:
$250K loan (let’s assume there will be other costs to chip away at that 24k merit he was awarded)
Pay it off in 5 years at today’s bank rate: $4600/month
Pay it off in 10 years: $2600/month
Pay it off in 20 years: $1600/month
Pay it off in 30 years: $1200/month.
That’s just a frickin’ huge burden to saddle yourself with at the age of 21 for four years of school.
You are doing your part by showing him how to be flexible and resilient.
Showing him other ways to amend his dream into reality, albeit a different one slightly than imagined.
What is his dream? To attend school in Manhattan and then return to wherever you are from? It may help to define what his dream entails because it is probably still available to him.
Does he want to make a career in NYC? If so, then there are other school options, and the funding he saves on tuition can set him up with a decent living situation. He will definitely appreciate that when his friends at NYU (because he can still socialize with NYU students) have huge debt and have to split a single room into four parts to stay here. He could have his own little studio apt. for what you save on tuition.
What I find helpful when I don’t know a school is to google [name of schoo] and [notable alumni] and you can see the cool people who have gone through that school successfully. Do they seem like your child? Have any lived his dream?
That may not help you now, but it might.
Like: The New School may give merit and it’s in the same neighborhood as NYU. You know there are viable options.
“Merit should count for more. It takes quite a lot of dedication to be that student. He did all the right things to get to his dream.”
I’ve seen many many parents and students express this opinion, so you aren’t alone. The fact is that if the school is not affordable, then the student should not mortgage his future (and that of his parents) to attend. Maybe show him some of these articles about NYU and student debt: http://www.villagevoice.com/news/nyu-students-debt-and-debtor-6433471; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/your-money/student-loans/29money.html;
And apparently there’s a facebook page dedicated entirely to student debt from NYU: https://www.facebook.com/nyudebtstories/
According to Collegedata,
NYU fully met the need of 6% of applicants
Also
NYU gave a mere 6% of students merit aid.
http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=436
It looks like the Eugene Lange Liberal ARts college at The New School gives a little bit of merit to a lot of people.
The average debt is lower compared with NYU but they don’t disclose how many parents are taking out PLUS loans.
http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1014
All your feedback is great…we probably know what we should do if we take all the emotion out of it…we have had these same discussions.
His dream is to live in a very liberal,like minded, academic, diverse place. He loves all that the city offers, he wants to meet people from all over the world, wants to be exposed to the art, the entertainment, gaining a safety net attachment (being school) to the area and his hope is someday to be a curator at a museum like the MET. His thinking is internships and connections and we believe those things can also happen for him and we can allow him greater experiences without the worry of paying some huge bill which will even limit what experiences he can have at a school like NYU because we could only pay the tuition! By days end, we will stop waffling and your feedback is keeping us grounded in what we should do. Thank you!
@dustyfeathers, NYU is NOT a state school. It is a private university.
That being said, @momnyu I think it’s really a personal decision. It’s unfortunate you thought you would get more money and sometimes the EFC calculators suck. I realized early the one for NYU sucks because it hardly asks for any information, so how can it accurately predict anything?! How far off was the calculator?
Your son is very lucky to have other terrific options including ‘nearly free rides’! Sounds like that’s hard to pass up. It is certainly not like a death. He will get over it.
Agree you need to check on the ED agreement. Usually you can only get out of it for financial reasons. Also, I wouldn’t prolong the decision if you intend on not allowing it in the end.
@momnyu wrote
Show him how much more he can do in the city with an extra $1600/month that isn’t going towards paying down school debt. Being poor in the city stinks.
City College debt is $16K total for four years on average, as a point of comparison.
(NYUs was about $30K and The New Schools on average is about $26K)
http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=405
For City College (and all CUNY schools) the tuition for OOS is $17K per year. If your son took 1 year as a gap year in NYC and volunteered and/or worked, then he’d gain in-state residency. His tuition would drop to about $6K per year.
if you add to that a purchase of a studio apt for him–an investment that will gain in value while he’s doing his gap year and while college–then his expenses will be that much lower. he could even get a roommate and live for half the cost.
he would graduate 1) with a nest egg instead of debt; 2) all of the connections he could have hoped for built over 5 years in the city; 3) a place to live which is not easy to find in NYC; 4) a great education; 5) and probably the connections he can build into a career.
CUNY system has very high quality teaching and is respected widely. See for example the Macaulay Honors program, which attracts Ivy level stats kids.
Duh. It’s a private school.
But in all other ways it acts like a big anonymous state school that doesn’t even have a football team.
Except that it charges private school prices.
Metaphor.
@momnyu where are you from? What is your child’s SAT /ACT and GPA? Family income?
And what other schools has he applied to or plans to apply to?
That all sounds wonderful. I also want that for him.
Rest assured that these things are available at the other schools in the City, if he wants to explore those options.