I am 96% sure that I’ll be attending Boston University this fall, my only concern is the price. I’ve accepted the fact that I’ll be deep in debt, but I was hoping someone had ideas on how to make or save some extra money while attending BU? Can I save on meal plans or will taking extra classes and graduating a semester early help, or are there any good jobs offered or anything like that? If anyone has any advice, ideas, or tips, it would be greatly appreciated! Thanks so much!
I didn’t get any financial aid and I decided to go to bu anyways so I totally feel u… ur gonna have to try to apply for as many scholarships and stuff as possible, you have to live on campus & have to have a dining plan (obviously don’t get the unlimited one and if u live on campus u must have a dining plan) as a freshman but after that if u look early I think u can find a cheap apartment (I’ve heard Allston and Brookline have okay neighborhoods if u look way in advance) but u have to decide whether the cost of a dining plan is better than buying your own food and having to cook it. obviously it goes without saying that u need to get a job but if u look early enough u can get one on campus. about taking extra classes, u are overloading and u end up paying more for
tuition per semester when u do that (I THINK if u take more than 4-5 classes per semester idk like more than 16 or 20 credit hours or something idk) and its a lot of work so u may as well not do that. so yeah good luck it totally sucks seeing people talking about how they got 20k a yr or something, I guess with debt it’s best to borrow as little as possible and pay most of the cost upfront as u can
I feel you guys because I got accepted as a freshman and decided not to go because of money, but applied again as a transfer because I wished I had gone. This time I got a bit of financial aid but still not much. I’ve been looking at a lot of websites on how to save and applying to a lot of random scholarships. I would say scholarships are definitely number one, choosing cheaper housing (even if it means not ideal living situations i.e. roommates and hall bath) like @acxdic said getting a smaller meal plan and buying/making your own food (I did this at my school this year and it saves a lot) and I even read that you can ask for more aid especially if you have a larger aid offer from somewhere else, some schools want to match it.
Also, I guess I have a question for @acxdic because this year again I’m wondering where I should go, and questioning Boston because of student loans. Do you think the price is worth taking out the loans and getting into debt? I’ve been asking myself this a lot and just want to get the perspective of someone who has done it.
@ilovecats12 I yearn to go to BU, it’s been my dream school for quite some time, and I still dont know yet if Im going. Thankfully, I got accepted, which opened the door for me and Im certainly proud of such an achievement; however, in regards to the price, I truly think its not worth it, and its breaking my heart to say no to BU (while I havent yet officially decided). I’d be paying 250k in student loans after college, and making little money through college and certainly not having a high-paying job out of college, will certainly put me behind the financial 8-ball. I’m not going to be able to do so many of the things that I love because of my crippling debt. Im so torn. I still dont know what to do, because the student life of BU is unbelievably rich and full of bright young minds, yet Im not paying for the student life and how I fit, Im ultimately paying for my education, and a BU education is not THAT different from other schools.
@b2val8 I was in your exact same (or almost) last year. I decided not to go, for the same reasons as you. I couldn’t even deny them, instead I just waited for my response time to time out. It wasn’t that I necessarily regretted my decision not to go to BU, I just regretted where I did decide to attend. That is why I reapplied this year to see if I could get more aid, and since I knew I wanted to leave my school I figured it was worth a shot. I did get some moderate aid and plan on asking for more (since I’ve read you can do that) and then seeing where I will go from there. I agree with the fact that their education is not that different. I believe they do have better connections, but you can find connections anywhere, that is all in the person. I hope that you have some other excellent schools to choose from, and find yourself somewhere you still enjoy greatly 