<p>I was in the exact same situation. I was accepted early into the RU honors program with the scarlet scholarship, but waitlisted from nyu cas. I was accepted into other pretty good private schools too, but my family is comfortable but can no way afford a private college. so I thought my decision was set until NYU CAS pulled me off the waitlist in early may 
with a meager financial aid of 10k a year plus w/s. I also should add that NYU was my dream school since I was seven (I was born and raised in queens) so you can imagine how i felt when i was waitlisted, then accepted, then realized I couldn’t afford it.</p>
<p>I went with rutgers. my friend went with nyu over the ru honors program. She loves it there and wouldn’t choose another school if she had the choice of doing it all over again. but her family is also kind of in a enormous financial crisis, and between enrolling in may and moving in in August, she had about 4 nervous breakdowns on different occasions about paying for the school. but still, even with enormous amounts of loans a second mortgage, she’s happy. </p>
<p>it’s also about fit, you know? it’s not all about prestige. yeah nyu has a fantastic reputation, but its student body also has a pretty bad rep for being pretentious, materialistic, snobby, whatever (not my opinion exactly, but it’s what i’ve heard). so if you think you’d enjoy that kind of nyc lifestyle then go right ahead and choose one of the most expensive schools in the country, especially if you don’t think you’d like rutgers. because the general largeness of the campus (not student body. i think nyu might even have more students than RU, or at least, it’s very close), the bureaucratic administration, the party mentality, the infamous buses, and all the other problems that come with having such a large student body while trying to make it affordable and approachable by the more not-as-wealthy masses. </p>
<p>(sorry for the long post, haha :)</p>
<p>but i do have to say that i am enjoying it here, as much as I thought i wouldn’t. i’ll be honest, i was a rutgers snob. I didn’t want to come here, and barely made the app deadline since i was convinced that i would never ever end up here. I cried when I figured out that i’d have to come here based on logistics. as an attempt to try to prove that i wasn’t, i wrote an article for my school paper that i wasn’t even a part of, that tried to convince people that it was okay, and even preferable, to go to a state school (people, meaning myself). </p>
<p>so in short, I was a rutgers snob. but i’ve found it to be to my liking, and I can’t picture myself being anywhere else. I’m finding my classes to be intellectually stimulating (i was unsure last semester but this semester, I’m taking harder classes so it’s quite a challenge, which I think I secretly enjoy), the people are not as stupid as I thought they would be (I’m trying to be honest here; they’re not), and I’ve made some pretty cool friends. yeah, rutgers has some flaws. a lot of them actually, but rutgers definitely doesn’t deserve all the crap it gets from kids who don’t even go here or have seen it.</p>
but i would have chosen RU first now that i think about it.</p>