<p>You have several strong in-state public schools - SUNY Binghamton, UBuffalo, UAlbany, Stony Brook University. Any one of those is a major, well-respected research university.</p>
<p>If you don’t think you can get into any of those as an in-state resident, how do you expect to get into “better” out-of-state schools?</p>
<p>More to the point, you cannot borrow more than, at most, $12,500 per year. Period. Nobody will loan you the money. Ergo, you need to get realistic about what schools you can afford to attend - because you won’t be going to any graduate school if you end up 8 credits short of a degree with $10,000 in unpaid bills holding up the release of your transcript.</p>
<p>There are far more than “five” quality graduate schools in physics anyway.</p>