UF: Full ride including room and board (Machen Scholarship)
NYU: Full tuition ( $50k CAS Scholarship + grants) - I’m stuck covering room and board + other fees, which runs about ~$17k/year
I’m leaning towards NYU since it’s always been my dream school, but I’m not too happy about having $60k+ in loans to pay off. How manageable does this amount of debt sound for a potential Computer Science major? How soon do you all figure I can pay this off given that I work summers and land a decent programming job upon graduation?
Also, can someone give me a quick course on loans? What happens if my parents won’t sign for a Parent’s Plus Loan? What kind of loan is available as a substitute that I can sign without getting my parents tied up in my debt?
Are you planning on staying in Florida after graduating FL? I’d go with UF. For 60K, I don’t think it’s possible for your parents to not get tangled up in your loan payments.
I know you’re not going to Duke, but they have some good information on loans that are applicable for everyone, including some of their recommended lenders: https://financialaid.duke.edu/loans
You can’t get that much without your parents being involved. You are limited to a total of $27K for your undergrad ($5.5K as a freshman, $6.5K as a sophomore, $7.5K as a Jr and Snr). Your parents would need to apply for a Plus loan and be turned down for you to get more $. Go to UF.
UF. You’ll also get BF money to help with other expenses. Everything will be cheaper in Gainesville than NYC. That $17k per year is just the minimum. You’ll have travel and incidental expenses. You’ll have winter clothing requirements that will contribute to the first year cost at least.
There is no substitute that I know of if your parents won’t sign for the additional loans. I think C.S. at UF would be really quite solid, with good advancement prospects. Why bother taking on so much more debt for undergrad? Why don’t you go to UF, do well, then apply for CS jobs in NYC after? UF is still east coast, and there will be recruiting there.
The problem is that in the best case scenario you work it out and you just have some steep undergrad debt, which you will regret, but you will have a decent job to pay it off. But there are a lot of scenarios where it causes stress and even disaster.
Why aren’t your parents able to contribute to some of the 17k (which will be 11.5k after your bearable amount of student loan allowed freshman year)? Is it because you are low income? In that case they cannot take the parent plus or private loans you would need them to take because they can’t make the payments that will be required until you can help with that. The student loans give flexibility like a 6 month grace period after graduation, income based repayment etc. Private loans don’t. There are no private loans without qualified cosigners, so you also have the issue of not qualifying for more debt half way through and then you are stuck leaving school.
This amount of debt can only be taken on by parents.
Go to UF, make the most out of everything they offer, get really involved, work with professors, join a research team, choose one of the best residence halls, with the money saved by your parents study abroad in big cities or even “study away” on another American campus in a big city, take on internships in the Silicon Valley or New York City (even with $1,300 a month rent and plenty of spending money, you come out with about $6,000 in extra expenses per year, easily covered by not having to pay tuition at UF, and you get to live the good life in NYC or CA 3 months in the year instead of scrimping every day!)
UF definitely, Free debt. Have you talked with your parents about that they will need to take out loans?
Also the tuition and fees, room and board most of the time increase.
UF hands down! You’ll be sure enough, to live comfortably after school, which is always great. Move to NYC after graduation. NYC isn’t cheap, as everyone else has said. It might not seem like much now, but in the long run it truly is.
And like others are saying, you can’t get a loan that large without your parents signing. You may have to “settle” for UF full ride, sniff sniff, if they don’t want to sign. At any rate, be glad you have a good, solid school for almost free.
UF. Why is this a serious question. $17,000 for this year and who knows what inflation will do. $60,000 is a lot of money and don’t let anyone convince you it isn’t. Especially when the other option is $0. What career defining education are you getting at NYU that you can’t get at UF?
To put $17,000 a year in perspective, that would completely cover my OOS tuition and fees. Now, I am going to a college much lower ranked than either NYU or UF, but still - that is just for room and board? It guess it is New York…
The problem is, what if you don’t land a great job right after graduation? If you have rough times, wouldn’t you rather at least have $0 than be in the hole for $60K+? And if you do get a good job, wouldn’t you rather save for a house, buy a car, get married, invest money, etc., etc., than be paying off loans? Not that you couldn’t possibly do those things while paying off the debt, but it would be much harder.
If you go to UF, and work in the summer, you might come out of college with net money, instead of debt.
NYU may be better than UF in some ways, but I agree with others that it’s not enough better to justify this much debt (and I don’t think debt is necessarily a dirty word).
