Who the heck goes to NYU? (and related subjects)

Parents Forum
1

My son is film and writing obsessed, and has been from an early age. Making short films on his camcorder, writing screenplays, etc, etc. For years, his dream school was NYU Tisch; we made it very clear from the beginning of the application process to be very prepared to a) not get in, and b) not be offered enough aid (we are far from wealthy, and NYU’s stingy reputation is known to even a fairly unaware person like me).

Unfortunately, (b) happened . . . but to an even greater extent than I imagined. He’ll be going to a lovely, well regarded LAC (near NYC, too!) for literally 1/7 (!!!) of the price of NYU. He moped around a bit, as can be expected, but once he realized that NYU Tisch connections, while nice, aren’t 100% percent necessary for success and happiness in life, he brightened up.

The plot twist: I seem to be struggling more with this than him.

I mean, come on! What kind of a way is that to run a school? If NYU put a little less money into local and overseas expansion, and a little more into student financial aid (actual fin aid, not the loan sharks they refer all the non-rich kids to), think of the increased quality of students they could get. I bet there are a lot of artsy kids with Ivy stats that would go to NYU instead if offered similar financial aid as HYP.

Now, NYU seems to be the poster-child for this type of thing, but they’re by far not alone in the “could increase student body quality if they changed their priorities” category.

So - what do you all think? It seems to me there are some schools out there who seem to care more about profit margins than about actually being a good college. Which is their prerogative as private universities, of course, (no one is entitled to an NYU education) but I can’t help but think this is a bubble. Sooner rather than later the prospect of spending 70,000 on a film degree will have to be a bit less popular, no?

2
  1. First, I want to say going to film school is a complete waste of time and money, regardless of whether it is NYU, USC, or any other school. You can do some research on your own or watch a couple videos on the topic, but going to film school is by no means required to get into the industry. If anything, many film majors don't even end up as film directors or related jobs in the industry. Many famous directors like Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, James Cameron, Wes Anderson, etc. never went to film school, and Werner Herzog even states that you can learn the basics of film making that they teach you in film school in about 3 weeks on your own. If your son is genuinely passionate about film making, he will learn more from his own experience than at school.
  2. I don't mean to offend you or your son, but NYU has no problems getting high caliber students with their stringy financial aid policy. This is because they offer a lot of merit scholarships to students that they really want or students that have Ivy level stats. You also have to remember that NYU has over 25,000 undergraduate students. That means there are enough quality students who are willing to attend NYU with similar stats to your son or the average accepted student while paying a lot of money. It is only if you are way above the accepted student profile that they offer a lot of merit scholarships.
  3. As a private University especially renowned for research, One of NYU's prerogative is to raise the profile not only nationally but also internationally. The flagship universities in Dubai and Shanghai raise NYU's international profile, attract talent from countries like Dubai, and can be very profitable being located in fast economic growing cities.
  4. Lastly, your son is obviously a bright kid and congrats to him on his college acceptances. Not attending NYU won't limit his opportunities since he is capable. Also, I think it might be a blessing in disguise. Film making is essentially the ability to tell a story from a perspective. The liberal arts focus on a broad range of studies including humanities, social sciences, etc. will give your son a diverse range of perspective. Essentially, I think it is more useful to learn how to think differently than how to shoot bridge shots and whatnot.
3

It sounds like you just want to vent. Nonetheless, NYU has a much smaller endowment than HYP with far more students. It shouldn’t surprise anyone they don’t offer as much financial aid.

4

Yes, @Dontskipthemoose - believe me, we were trying not to force him into anything, but are quietly cheering that he’ll be attending a school strong in the liberal arts rather than a pure film school. To him, the main appeal of a school like NYU were the “connections” one makes; while they no doubt exist, nothing is guaranteed, and it seems foolish to shell out for some abstract hope.

And I realize some of the very high achieving students receive generous NYU packages. Anecdotally, though, I know more than one HYP acceptee who received less that stellar scholarships there, so the process seems pretty random.

NYU’s strategy is obviously effective at increasing their brand value - back in my day, it was a fairly unremarkable commuter school that regularly handed out full rides to my classmates, so obviously they’ve done very well in that area. Everything comes with a trade-off, however, and I do believe their rep for poor financial aid is a direct result of aggressive spending in these other areas.

5

Tisch is marketing a luxury product. NYU buys top talent by awarding full ride scholarships to a small fraction of applicants, and for the most part,the balance of the students enrolling in Tisch come from wealth – or at least from parents wealthy enough to manage its costs. Very few parents are going to be willing to borrow extensively for an arts degree – it might be different for a finance or STEM degree, where the family can rationalize that a future high salary will justify the investment in the undergrad degree – but no one assumes that an arts degree will necessarily lead to a lucrative salary.

I wouldn’t go as far as @Dontskipthemoose by characterizing a film degree as a total waste of time and money, but the hype that surrounds Tisch is just that – hype.

But obviously Tisch wouldn’t have the appeal to attract kids like your son if it didn’t already have exactly the “quality of student body” that it wants.

It may not be politically correct, but a student body heavily weighted with the offspring of wealthy parents is not really a bad thing for a university to have,especially for an arts school where the future success of many of its students may very well depend on their access to resources for funding of arts projects.

6

A larger issue has to do with NYU’s rapid transition from being a commuter school for lower-middle class to wealthy NYC area locals who were Ivy and before 1969, CCNY/CUNY rejects* to attempting to become an international university with a profile comparable to the Ivy/peer elite universities.

The transition was still happening when I was applying to colleges in the mid '90s considering NYU CAS while strong in a few departments, was considered just a slight step up from the local CCNY/CUNY colleges after their post-'69 precipitous decline. And it showed considering over 1/3 of my graduating class including yours truly were accepted to CAS with the vast majority being in the middle to the bottom of our graduating HS class.

A part of NYU’s effort to raise their academic profile was to cut need-based FA and redirect their targeting towards the wealthiest SES locally, nationally, and internationally and away from the lower-middle class/lower income students who were once one of their core constituencies before the early '80s. This aspect really incensed many older friends who attended NYU back when FA was more plentiful and one could feasibly work part-time to pay for their tuition.

  • Before when CCNY/CUNY were considered academically elite and much harder to gain admission to than NYU as attested by a few older neighbors who were NYU alums in the '50s and '60s. Incidentally, this factor was one reason why a journalistic piece on General Colin Powell was criticized by knowledgeable New Yorkers when it anachronistically implied he attended CUNY because NYU was too expensive whereas the real likely reason back when he attended was because CUNY was considered a more academically elite institution when he attended/graduated (He graduated class of 1958).
7

@roethlisburger - No denying that, this is most certainly a venting post. For of course everyone’s child is unarguably The Greatest, Most Brilliant, and Most Handsome/Beautiful, and all colleges should give them a full ride :wink:

@cobrat CUNY, IMO, is one of the most interesting transformations happening right now in the higher education world. Of course they had a slump following the “poor man’s Harvard” golden era, but recently due to policy changes and the Macaulay Honor’s program they’re attracting top notch kids.

8

The Expensive Romance of NYU:
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/08/the-expensive-romance-of-nyu/278904/

9

I don’t think this is a venting post. The OP raises some important questions about the values and emphases at NYU. As stated at the outset, it’s not known for great financial aid – and its overseas expansion is questionable and not necessarily adding to its US-based reputation. NYU usually gets singled out in those articles about undergrads borrowing $200K or more to attend a university, although not sure if that equates to high average student-loan debt.

The bigger point is that colleges and universities do not all have the same types of commitments in relation to undergraduates, financial aid, programs, etc. Universities are not necessarily benevolent institutions.

I think the OP should be happy about the LAC at a fraction of the cost of a big private. I recently met a filmmaker who made a great feature film, and he was a liberal arts major at a LAC. Adios, NYU.

10

2015 Endowment per Student:

Princeton: $ 2,809,000 per student
Yale: $ 2,073,000 per student
Harvard: $ 1,736,000 per student
NYU: $ 62,000 per student
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment

Yes, those numbers are correct. NYU simply does not have the financial resources to offer every enrolled students the same kind of aid as HYP. It’s not even close. Many LACs (quite possibly including the one that your kid is attending) are also much wealthier than NYU on an endowment-per-student basis.

11

I have a friend who is still paying off her child’s Tisch degree and the kid never took a single audition after graduation. Her older child did a film degree at UChicago, but then went to law school, so her loans are getting paid off. OTOH, she never made a minute of film after college.

My son is going for a BFA in theater tech. We talked about Tisch and he has friends there now and others who are attending in the fall, but he decided that the cost was ridiculous. He is going to a SUNY school. We would have been full pay at NYU. His grades and scores aren’t high enough for the relatively meager merit aid it bestows and we don’t qualify for FA. If he does well at his program, we might be able to help with a master’s.

My primary memories of NYU are from the 70’s, when it was a place where rich Jewish and Italian kids whose parents could afford private college but didn’t want their little snowflakes too far from home sent them. I got into NYU, but my parents couldn’t afford it so I attended CUNY in an honors program. My cousin was at NYU while I was at CUNY and I got just as good an education as he did, based on our discussions.

I frankly think OP should be happy about dodging a financial bullet.

12

NYU is hardly unique in being hard to afford for a large percentage of students who need financial aid.

Indeed, if you use the college 411 search tool on http://www.collegedata.com and search for colleges where graduates have > $35,000 in student loan debt, you will find some other schools at higher levels than NYU ($30,480 average student loan debt). Some selected examples:

86262 Berklee College of Music
51887 Grambling State University
48244 Stevens Institute of Technology
45582 Penn State Hazleton
42128 Penn State Worthington Scranton
41804 Rose Hulman Institute of Technology
41500 Texas Southern University
40639 Penn State Harrisburg
40365 Boston University
39770 Penn State York
39346 Penn State Erie
39091 Penn State Altoona
39014 Albany State University
38971 Keene State College
38045 University of Pittsburgh
37607 Fordham University
35972 Penn State University Park
30480 New York University

The presence of several public universities with higher levels a student loan debt per graduate than NYU seems to be a greater concern generally (particularly to low and middle income residents of the states with those public universities) than whether NYU is really only suitable for students from wealthy families or those who get merit scholarships or preferentially packaged financial aid there. Also, some other well known private universities are worse than NYU in student loan debt levels, but it seems that NYU is still the symbol of “too expensive with poor financial aid” despite that.

13

I have a friend whose daughter is still paying off her music management degree from NYU. She is 27 years old, lives at home, and not working- still trying to break into the industry.

14

NYU was still considered a commuter school for NYC kids when I applied (and accepted). I didn’t recall it being ridiculously priced back then as it is now. NYU has been buying up real estate in Manhattan for years to build up its financial portfolio. The acquisition of the former Polytechnic Institute of New York (now Tandon school of engineering) in downtown Brooklyn came with a sizable amount of now expensive real estate in crazy hot Brooklyn.

15

As has been stated elsewhere, the size of a school’s endowment is not necessarily reflected in its generosity. Financial Aid also reflects a particular college’s priorities. Barnard College has a very small endowment, overall and per capita. Yet is is need-blind and “full need”. The reason is the College’s priorities. Of course Barnard also has the luxury of spending more of its money on FA since it has access to Columbia University resources, whereas other colleges are stand alone.

In the case of NYU, it acknowledges that it practices “preferential packaging”. So does Boston University. This is a legitimate strategy. My objection to NYU is its priorities–especially its focus on acquiring real estate. There is nothing wrong with this, I just think it should be otherwise.

16

As a private institution NYU is free to spend its money as it wishes and students are free to attend the college or not with tthe financial package they receive. If the school stops filling up, it may need to re-prioritize how to allocate the school’s money (ex. maybe more aid and less real estate) but for now NYU seems to be doing just fine.

17

My kid is a student at NYU Tisch student (BFA drama). She got “some” aide there, but we are paying for a very expensive education… and while I do NOT enjoy the tuition bills… I also think sometimes you get what you pay for. All of her top choice schools (NYU, Northwestern, Boston, Carnegie Mellon) were pricey - we knew that going in. They also have stellar reputations both artistically and academically, which was important to our family. So we are paying… and will continue to do so after D has graduated (she will be debt free, we will not). Whether the connections gained become the deciding factor in her career is yet to be determined - but we feel we are getting our money’s worth and that is what matters.

College profiles change over time. How many posts are there on CC where people talk about how Ivy admissions have changed? If NYU used to be people’s safety… it’s not that way anymore. There are lots of state flagships that used to be automatic admits instate that are now getting really competitive too… it’s the new normal

The fact is NYU is at the top of many kid’s wish list (google “NYU dream school” and you will come up with TONS of articles and links - I am unsure of TOS and don’t want to link the wrong type) and they have NO trouble getting students. As others have said, if that changes, maybe they will have a motivation to change too. BTW- those full pay international students are highly valued at other selective universities as well…

I have to say- I really don’t get the rage about schools like NYU having high tuition. It would be like me being enraged that Porsche makes cars I can’t afford (and I really can’t, after all, I am paying for my kid to go to NYU!) When I went car shopping, I looked at cars I could pay for, and chose from that group (mini cooper BTW- I love it) rather than spend time venting about the idea that there are other options out there that cost 2-3x as much. JMHO

18

I certainly am grateful I dodged that financial bullet when I turned down admission to NYU CAS for my LAC in the mid- '90s.

If I had not, I could have easily been in the same position as a younger friend who is now over half a million in debt from just 2 years at NYU CAS*, 3 years of law school, and graduating right into the 2008 recession thanks to compounding interest and despite being one of the lucky few from his law school class to be hired into any attorney position, doesn’t earn anywhere near enough to defray his burgeoning loans.

  • He had a complete free ride at his first regional 4 year university.

Ironic how that acquisition meant NYU and Poly came full circle considering Poly was one of the NYC area institutions which took on many former NYU engineering faculty when NYU divested itself of its engineering school sometime in the 1970’s.

Another beneficiary of former NYU engineering faculty in that period was Manhattan College’s engineering school where my former supervisor/friend did his undergrad.

Some of that rage comes from older NYU alums(pre-early '80s) who attended when NYU provided more FA and had lower tuition so lower-income/lower-middle class students could feasibly attend while working part-time who are now finding their children(my generation) or their grandchildren(current undergrads/college applicants) can no longer feasibly afford to attend.

Part of it may also be the perceived hypocrisy from NYU’s longstanding motto of “A private university in the public service”. Something which also especially rankles those older NYU alums including a few older neighbors in my building.

19

You don’t get it at all. An entry-level Porsche is going to be at least $60k. Clearly, Porsche has made a decision to abandon the upper middle class. Even if I could manage to buy a 718, why should I have to settle for that, when I know the 911 Turbo would provide the best fit for me and my family.

20

As a former poly and now NYU alum, I will not give them a dime when they come asking for money.