<p>So, I was accepted to NYU, and was ecstatic..to find out I received 0 merit aid and just a ****ty 56K loan. I'd love to go to NYU, and my parents are helping pay for it, but i'd still come out of undergrad with some debt. I plan on going to med-school, so i've been advised against spending 225K for undergrad..but I really want to go!
My family is pushing Binghamton, although they said that they'd support my decisions. They feel Binghamton is the best way to get the most for your money, especially when you're going to continue on. I've heard some terrible reviews about professors and life at Bing, and that it's miserable there. So that is making me iffy..
I also got accepted to BU, but NYU>BU in my opinion..and
Delaware, which everyone seems to love..it's middle of the road in price, but I'm not sure if that's the right place to go if I want to go pre-med. Can anyone help me out in this decision making?</p>
<p>From Princeton Review - Binghamton doesn’t sound too miserable to the students they surveyed:</p>
<p>Campus Life and Facilities</p>
<p>Binghamton University Students Say…</p>
<p>Students tell us that “campus life is really great” at Binghamton, offering “tons of activities to participate in, including club or intramural sports, student government, fraternities/sororities (both social and professional), student groups, and more.” Dorms are “convenient” and “clean” (although “living off-campus is less expensive”), and undergrads are kept busy “trying to balance classes, school work, jobs, volunteer work, and sports…. There’s never enough time for everything you want to do.” Some complain that “the weekends can get pretty dull on campus,” which is why they opt for beer-soaked fraternity parties or “the bars downtown.” According to the drinking crowd, “The weeks can be stressful with a lot of classes, papers and tests, so students tend to unwind on the weekends. Once the frats run out of alcohol, people generally walk about 10 minutes to the bars.” However, the drinking scene is by no means the only weekend alternative. As one student explains, “For people not interested in that, there is late night Binghamton,” which “shows movies; has hypnotists, magicians, or comedians come; [and] has crafts to do, and it’s all free.” Binghamton is also experiencing a resurgence, and students frequently patronize many of the cafes, restaurants, and galleries found downtown.</p>
<p>Do you want to become a doctor or go into research? In general, you don’t need to get into a top med school to become a respected doctor in your community (your residency will determine that). If that’s the case, I’d highly highly recommend the cheaper option. Being saddled with debt is hard enough after four years of undergrad, and if you add med school costs on–eek! I recommend looking into the specifics of how long it would take you to pay off NYU+state med school and seriously consider retooling your expectations.</p>
<p>As an example, my dad was a Duke undergrad who returned to his home state (Mississippi) for med school, then came back to Duke for his residency. He could have just as easily been accepted to Ole Miss from a cheaper university (assuming good grades and MCATs) and gotten a Duke residency and ended up with the same career he has now. Really, unless you’re planning on going into medical research, where an MD from a top school can open some serious doors, it’s not your undergrad that will affect your future.</p>
<p>where did you hear the “Terrible reviews” about Binghamton? Listen, ask your parents if they are willing to take the additional money they would spend on NYU, and apply it to your Med School tuitions…</p>
<p>Your answer was in your title. $225K is a ridiculous amount of debt to start your life with. By any measure, it’s not a good idea to take that on.</p>
<p>You mention that your parents would be paying some. Can they afford it? Can you find out what your true debt would be with NYU?</p>
<p>Going into great debt and planning on med school is a really, really bad idea. You don’t need to go to a great undergrad (or even med school!) to be a successful doctor. Another factor to consider is that med schools look heavily at GPA. If you could get a much better GPA at Binghamton, you’ll have an easier time getting into med school.</p>
<p>NYU is so not worth big debt for pre-med. </p>
<p>You need your money for med school.</p>
<p>If you don’t want to go to Bing, where else did you apply to besides BU & UDel? With your likely stats, you probably could have gotten some generous merit at other schools.</p>
<p>Maybe you need to quickly send out a few more apps to schools that are still accepting. What are your stats?</p>
<p>$225K? You’ve got to be kidding.</p>
<p>Just want to echo what others have said on here. It really makes no sense to go into debt here. None at all. </p>
<p>Have you visited each of the campuses? I think such visits really help these decisions (especially when you feel ‘set’ on one campus over another).</p>
<p>i would go to binghamton. it’ll probably give you a better college experience. that said, i know a lot of happy people at udel, so i suggest visiting both campuses.</p>
<p>NYU would be a really bad choice for you.
- Its reputation isn’t much of an improvement over Binghamton, which is considered a very hot school right now. NYU is famous for being stingy with financial aid.
- Living in NYC when you’re trying to concentrate on a very difficult major is distracting. If you were planning on a career in something that really required the resources of a city like New York, such as publishing or film, where you could get a lot of unique internships during the semester, that would be different, possibly. But you can get the same benefit in Binghamton that you can in NYU for what you’re doing.
- NYU is like a big factory school with little school spirit and no real campus. People I know who go there often feel lost and have a hard time finding a place to connect and get to know each other. Part of going to college is having that feeling of rubbing shoulders with people enough times to really get to know them. It’s more difficult in an amorphous place like NYU.
- Money! Becoming a doctor is VERY expensive. If you can change your attitude so that you’re excited about Binghamton, you can save a fortune. It’s amazing that you can have that power in your own mind, but you can.</p>
<p>haha wow i am shocked that i got so many responses! I was also accepted to Stony Brook, Ithaca, Marist, & American, and wait-listed at Brandeis and Geneseo. I received money to Marist and Ithaca, but have no interest in attending after receiving my other acceptances.</p>
<p>I heard terrible reviews of Bing from my friends’ siblings who attend, and online through various reviews, especially about the teachers. I figured every SUNY research institution is going to have teachers that are foreign and aren’t just there to teach. The problem is the teachers I met at NYU seemed so dedicated ha. Wish I wouldn’t have looked at NYU first :(</p>
<p>My SAT wasn’t extravagant, 630/620/710, but my grades and activities were good, had a 3.7 with all honors/AP classes plus activities like band, varsity tennis and track, and both of my parents are in the medical field so I’ve had a lot of experience with figuring out what I want to do, which helped me write some good essays. </p>
<p>My parents are paying for 125Kish of schooling for me, which only covers half of undergrad at NYU, which is why i’m thinking Bing will be better, bc i’d have 4 years of undergrad and 1 year of grad paid for. Delaware would basically be paid for also.</p>
<p>Ah these decisions are so hard! thank you so much though for the advice! :)</p>
<p>Since Binghamton and NYU academics are about the same, know that if you choose NYU you’re paying 225K extra on the campus experience alone. I’m not trying to tell you what to choose, just pointing this fact out. </p>
<p>How much money would you be paying at BU? It’s probably the most similar school to NYU out there, though a bit behind academically.</p>
<p>And, lastly, have you even visited Binghamton? If not, I highly suggest you do so before formulating wildly negative opinions about the school. While it is a suburban school (versus ultra-urban NYU), you also applied to schools like Geneseo and Delaware so it can’t be that bad…</p>
<p>Don’t go into debt if you plan on attending med school. DunninLA has the right idea. If your parents are willing to put the money they saved sending you to Binghamton towards part of med school tuition, then this would definitely be the ideal situation.</p>
<p>Princeton Review ranks NYU as #5 in Least Happy Students</p>
<p>Tough choice…I agree. I went to NYU and loved it, but didn’t go into debt to attend. Didn’t go to med school either. In your situation Bing really does make sense as others have said. It’s certainly not the same as NYU and living in NYC, but I figure as a pre-med student you will be spending a lot of time studying so maybe you wouldn’t be able to take advantage of what NYC has to offer anyway. Worth thinking about…</p>
<p>liek0806 – I don’t know where the Review gets its data, but I have found the actual comments of current students along with the % “wouldn’t come here again” as more relevant than a blind statistic quoted by PR.</p>
<p>students review dot com – go to that website, plug in NYU the “search for University” box, see the pie chart, and click on “click to find out why” link. Then read the 325 student comments in all the four categories: Positive, Neutral, Advice, and Negative. It shows 32% “wouldn’t come here again”, which is right about average for these reviews. Binghamton is actually 42%, but I haven’t read the comments themselves so I don’t know what the area of dissatisfaction is… you can read them for yourself. Oh, try to avoid comments by 1st year students… they just haven’t been at the college long enough to give a balanced view. Read the comments by sophomores, juniors, and seniors.</p>
<p>yes i visited it, but i didn’t love it. it was alright. i could make myself happy and spend four years there. i live 45 minutes from nyc so i’ve been to the city countless times, it’s not anything new to me. i thought it would be fun to live there…doesn’t help that one of my best friends just got accepted to nyu stern :(</p>
<p>and yeah, bing and nyu prob have similar academics, but the classes i would be in at nyu were very small (LSP), and i liked that a lot. </p>
<p>all my friends are like are you crazy?! you’re not going to NYU!? it’s so hard to have that in your face hah</p>
<p>& i’m going to look on that website. thanks :)</p>
<p>I visited Geneseo and the school was very nice and the kids seemed alot more real than the kids at bing.</p>
<p>One of my colleagues and his wife went to Medical School at Georgetown. He ended up dropping out in his third year, then getting his MBA at Columbia. He and his wife (now a primary care doctor, who works part time) both financed their education with loans. He says he and his wife will not pay off their loans before their kids go to college, so they can’t help their kids, even though they both have good jobs. He says he didn’t realize the effect that they loans would have on the rest of his life, and might not have made the same choices.</p>
<p>Bing seems like a good choice to me.</p>