<p>I really want to get into NYU. It's been my dream school ever since I was a freshman. But the thing I have absolutely no family in New York and my parents say that I will have a hard time getting by because there will be no one there to help me. All my family is in the west coast, so my entire family is unfamiliar with the east coast. Most of them have never been to New York. My parents say New York is a scary place but they have not even been there. They don't even want me to APPLY to NYU. I am top of my class (rank number 6 out of 100) and all my teachers tell me I should definitely give NYU a shot. I think I am qualified for it, but it's not fair that I'm not even allowed to apply.. how can I talk to them about it? I have tried endlessly to talk to my dad to get me to apply but he won't budge. He always says that the lack of family and the lack of experience in New York makes it a very scary place for me.</p>
<p>My daughter wanted to go to school in California because her boyfriend wanted her to. I told her I’d only pay for the application if she could give me a non-boyfriend reason to apply to a school, and she needed to tell me how she was going to pay for it with only the amount I said I would pay for college. She looked up a few and then gave up (she is not tops in her class, and would get little grants/scholarship money). </p>
<p>If you really want to apply to NYU, show your father how you would finance it, what you would study that you can’t find at another college closer to home, where you would live, how you would travel. Don’t just say it is your dream school - prove to him why you need to go there. Start by paying your own application fee.</p>
<p>NYU is not known for being generous with grants and scholarships, and it does cost a lot.</p>
<p>NYU for undergraduate isn’t all that great. Why not a school with a more defined campus but still close enough to the city so you can get a feel for it and develop a respectable contempt for it.</p>
<p>Have you discussed with your parents what their parameters/limits are? Is NYU their sole objection or all schools in NYC? What about any school east of Chicago? What are they willing to pay? NYU is very expensive and rarely meets need.</p>
<p>Parents often have their own criteria, most often involving money but distance from family may be another one. Some parents limit the distance of the schools be it a two hour drive or two hour flight. </p>
<p>Instead of saying NYU is your dream school and you just have to go (no, you don’t), think why you picked this particular university. I think you’ll find other universities that come close. If you want NYU because it’s in NYC then you need to show how you would handle emergencies in absence of any family. Does .your family have close friends in the city?</p>
<p>Parents often get dinged here (and rightfully so ) for having disagreements in April over where there kids are going to school. Some even outright refuse to pay for certain ones. The question is often “why did you let them apply if you were against this school?!”. It’s a pretty common thought that letting a student apply to a school you’re opposed to, knowing you’re going to draw a line in the sand, is cruel. Parents have a myriad of reasons for being opposed to certain schools and don’t assume as a student you know what these are. When NYU comes up I immediately question a concern of paying. As stated, NYU is known for poor aid. Don’t assume you know your parents ability to pay. Have you asked how much they can pay towards school each year? If it’s less then sticker and a buffer of personal and travel expenses (always more then you think), then assume NYU is unaffordable. If money is a concern, it sounds like there are others as well…no family nearby, safety…you’d have to address these before you could get them to even think about agreeing to let you apply to NYU to see if it were affordable. You’d have to be willing to walk away if the numbers don’t add up to their comfort. </p>
<p>The fact is, as long as they’re paying, or helping, you need to work with them. The best way is to determine what their perimeters really are initially are and address those in a respectful, mature discussion. Doing this in a defiant, argumentative way will only prove their point that you’re not ready to be that far on your own.</p>
<p>Time to have that ‘criteria’ talk with your parents - as in, what are their criteria for a school they would support you attending? Constraints may be financial, distance, type of school, location, the political/religious orientation, size….all of these issues need to be explored in the context of what they think matters and what you want. Picking a ‘dream school’ without having had this conversation with them is frankly, a waste of your time. As blue iguana said, you want this information now, not in April.</p>
<p>Once you and they have a list of agreed upon criteria, you’ll be able to find great schools that fit all or most of the parameters. Come back here for suggestions if you want that input from the forum.</p>
<p>NYU is a dream school for a lot of kids–not because of what it offers as a university but because it is in NYC. Prove to your parents (or us here, if you want more advice) what it is about NYU that is so great for what you want to do with your life.</p>
<p>My son’s best friend attends NYU and is miserable. It is a tough place to “do” college, for many, many reasons. That is not to say that it doesn’t work for some kids–it does. But it is not like what you might have seen on Gossip Girl.</p>
<p>ETA: Looking at some of your past posts, you seem to have a lot of “DREAM schools” (UCLA, Stanford, etc.). And you are from Guam. And you need financial aid, which is likely to be sorely lacking at NYU. Keep in mind the cost of getting back and forth to New York, as well as the absurdly ridiculous incidental costs of everything in NYC. Know the limits of the debt you can take on yourself. You want to start your life post-college in the best possible shape for financial success, especially if you don’t have family resources to back you up. Good luck.</p>
<p>NYU is a dream school for a lot of kids–not because of what it offers as a university but because it is in NYC</p>
<p>Exactly!</p>
<p>NYU isn’t that great of a school for many majors. It lacks a campus, lacks a cohesive feeling, lacks spirit…and really the only big deal is that it’s in NYC and that’s great for Stern and Tisch students.</p>
<p>My sister had the same concerns as your parents and only let her kids apply OOS to areas where there were relatives close by. It’s an understandable concern that some people have.</p>
<p>Have you asked your parents how much they’ll pay no matter where you go?</p>
<p>ETA: Looking at some of your past posts, you seem to have a lot of “DREAM schools” (UCLA, Stanford, etc.). And you are from Guam. And you need financial aid, which is likely to be sorely lacking at NYU. Keep in mind the cost of getting back and forth to New York, as well as the absurdly ridiculous incidental costs of everything in NYC.</p>
<p>Oh good heavens. NYU isn’t for you. </p>
<p>What are your stats, how much will your family pay, and what is your major?</p>
<p>Hich, NYU is very expensive. They do not guarantee to meet full need for all, and they don’t. Many students find themselves with significant gaps.</p>
<p>Other posts indicate that you need significant aid to attend college. </p>
<p>Most parents have some criteria for college choices. We also insisted that our kids attend college either within a three hour drive from home OR within a one hour trip to a relative or close friend. It was a NON-NEGOTIABLE criteria. And we also told them this before they sent the applications…because we absolutely would have said NO to any acceptance that didn’t fulfill this criteria.</p>
<p>I would not allow my daughter to apply to her dream school. It was a private school, a thousand miles away, and she had been diagnosed with asthma and some other medical issues in her junior year of high school. </p>
<p>There was no way that she/we could have afforded for her to attend that school (so I would have refused even without the medical fears keeping me nervous). What good would it have done for her to be accepted and then not be able to attend?</p>
<p>She made some lasting friends at the state school, has a job that she loves (and married a guy who did graduate from her dream school).</p>
<p>By an NYU grad: [The</a> Expensive Romance of NYU - Jake Flanagin - The Atlantic](<a href=“The Expensive Romance of NYU - The Atlantic”>The Expensive Romance of NYU - The Atlantic)</p>
<p>As everyone has said, NYU is very expensive and has poor financial aid. I would not let my kids accumulate large loans.</p>
<p>However, you do not mention money as a reason for your parent’s opposition.</p>
<p>NYC is very different from the city of 30 years ago. Perhaps they should visit. It is actually high up on the list of safe cities.</p>
<p>In terms of distance: one of my kids has three significant chronic health conditions, two of which can be quite dangerous. Nevertheless, I took her more than halfway across the country to look at schools and encouraged her attendance at all. I felt it was her right to choose, as long as we could afford them (or the aid was sufficient). She ended up choosing to be close to home and we are glad she did. But I did not limit her, she limited herself.</p>
<p>Colleges have many supports available. Everything from resident advisors to therapists to tutors to deans. Does your family have good reason to think you will not be able to support yourself emotionally or academically? It sounds like you think not.</p>
<p>I suggest your family familiarize themselves with NYC. And if it is affordable for them, maybe they could meet with you and a teacher or guidance counselor who supports your application, or even a therapist. Definitely enlist help from a third party.</p>
<p>But also, examine why you want to go there so much!</p>
<p>However, you do not mention money as a reason for your parent’s opposition</p>
<p>the parents may have no idea that NYU gives lousy aid since it’s a top school. They may think that it’s like the other top schools and meet need. Also, since they’re opposed to NYU based on geography alone, they may not have done the NPC or anything. </p>
<p>“I really want to get into NYU.” </p>
<p>Ok…so you want to “get into NYU”. What’s the point when it won’t be affordable even if your parents were ok with NYC???</p>
<p>Is it NYU specifically, or do you want to go to school in New York? Would your parents permit you to apply to Barnard or Fordham, for example? Or is their comfort zone closer to home? Will they let you live on campus anywhere? You have a lot to discuss with them–money, their expectations, your academic/career desires–good to start now. Have your parents research all your options with you so that they understand the American college system; if you are from Guam, they may not have much real knowledge of the process.</p>
<p>The OP has said in other threads that money is an issue. And I disagree that NYU is a “top school.” Maybe for a few programs–the ones that are hardest to get into. But not most of them.</p>
<p>Your parents are paying, not you. Time to grow up</p>
<p>I am not encouraging my D to apply to colleges in CA even though we have family there. It’s REALLY far away and it costs a lot to fly there and back. It’s just not doable for us and I’ve told D that. Now if she got a bug about Stanford and got in with great aid I would try to find a way to make that work but it feels like our college budget is best directed towards schools in our area or along the eastern seaboard which are much easier/cheaper to get to. </p>
<p>Money may be a lot of it for this family, they just haven’t said it that way.</p>
<p>We are from Michigan and DD is looking as far west as Minnesota. We’re looking at small Christian schools though (more of a family feel). We have relatives in Minneapolis but we’re aren’t close with them. We have relatives in Milwaukee and looking at lots of schools in Wisconsin. Her non custodial dad lives in Tennessee so that’s an option too. Have family in SC and so yep, looking there as well as North Carolina (have a brother there as well.) I have a brother in Northern California but don’t think she needs to apply to any schools there. So out about 1,000 miles in either direction of Detroit. It makes sense that your parents are concerned about NYU being too far.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu/financialAid/documents/tuitiongeneral.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu/financialAid/documents/tuitiongeneral.pdf</a>
Don’t forget—the cost goes up every single year.</p>
<p>How do you plan on paying for NYU?</p>
<p>If you really just want to experience NYC, take a trip there for a few days. It’s a lot cheaper than paying $60,000 plus/yr just to say you go to school in NYC.</p>
<p>hichristen: you can’t even convince a random bunch of objective strangers (who won’t pay a single penny towards your education) why your parents should let you apply to NYU. With some simple digging, people have put forth reasons that validate your parents’ restrictions.</p>
<p>Not your lucky day…</p>