<p>If you're looking to go into pre-law, then yes you'd apply to CAS. It doesn't stand alone as it's own major, at least I don't think if it's like most pre-law programs, so you'd have to get a major later on. </p>
<p>The fact that you are an African-American Male, of course, does work to your advantage. The 20K a year part only works for purposes of financial aid, and even then you STILL might not get enough...who knows what madness is going down at the NYU financial aid office these days haha. Either way, for scholarships CAS is pretty numbers and GPA based, and only the most competitive applicants (top 5%) get the most merit-based aid. With that GPA, you might not get too much merit-based aid. However, if you are a National Merit scholar, you could qualify for the Baird Scholarship. Of course, your FAFSA EFC is automatically going to be zero I believe, so hopefully NYU can give you a substantial amount of need-based aid. </p>
<p>You could probably put a lot of very interesting things in your essay...there's not too many applicants to NYU whose families make less than 20K (not even mine, and I'm pretty poor lol). Use that to your advantage and make it good.</p>
<p>Finally, about admissions...your ACT score is perfect, your GPA not so much...it's ok though, not too shabby, especially for an upward trend. However, I wouldn't worry too much about it. As long as you have some honors and AP, as well as good ECs and recs (which you say you have), you should be at least GSPed, if not accepted to CAS outright.</p>
<p>As far as dorm life goes:
Honestly, the dorms at NYU are, for the most part, pretty amazing, at least compared to most other schools. Sure, they're all averaging room and board around $11,000, but hey, you sort of get what you pay for: location and nice perks such as air-conditioning (unless you're in a freshman traditional style--Rubin and Brittany--with no air-conditioning, making them cheaper), NO communal bathrooms (except one random one in Weinstein)...basically you're sharing a bathroom with 1-3 or 4 people. </p>
<p>This year I'm in Hayden and I absolutely love it. It's a traditional style dorm (most dorms are apartment style with a kitchen and stuff...only freshmen have the option of traditional style) and there's a general consensus that Hayden's the most popular freshman dorm because it's social, and it's in an amazing location, Washington Square West, a short walk to classes (along with most other freshman dorms). But you can view so many threads about dorms on CC, I know I did when I was applying this time last year lol.</p>
<p>As far as a sense of community among students: well, it just depends, really, on who you hang with. In my experience, you make a tight-knit group of friends and also have others that you hang out with occasionally. But generally, NYU social scene is ultimately what you make of it...you can shut yourself in which is quite easy to do especially in apartment-style dorms, or you can go out and make friends and take advantage of living in this part of the city. Because most of us will never be able to afford living in Washington/Union Square or Uptown ever again lol. The fact that NYU has no real campus makes a sense of community more difficult to envision but strangely gives it a more independent viewpoint--NYU is not the school to hold your hand, haha. </p>
<p>Good luck with your application, hope everything works out for you!</p>