<p>Not that it has any relevance to the subject of this thread, but unless something has changed at NYU @toowonderful, you can indeed pick (or at lest request) your freshman year roommates if you want to. My daughter put together a group of 4 (she didn’t know any of them) that she found I guess through Facebook or some other matching tool that I think NYU has. They all requested each other and were indeed assigned together… but not in the lower cost dorm (it’s not air-conditioned) that they had requested. I know there were other deliberate roommate selections as well. </p>
<p>Also, @GSOMTMom, that list from the link above is not based on financial aid award received. I think it’s just a list of the direct costs (tuition, room and board) or total costs (tuition, room and board, and fees but not books, travel etc…) There is no “netting out” financial aid nor merit aid as that would vary by individual. And I agree with broadway95 above. I also ignored books, travel, personal expenses etc. too. Book are books. Chances are it won’t vary much by school in a way that should make or break the decision. Travel you can keep in the back of your mind if you want to but it’s really a function of can you drive there or not. For us on the west coast, it’s actually much cheaper to fly into a place like NYC than it would be to fly to many places much closer but in less of a major hub. But then you get into the expense of summer storage in a place like NYC vs. San Marco, TX and you get back to square one again. So I’d focus on the big ticket items as @broadway95 suggests above.</p>
<p>@vocal1046, I pulled preliminary numbers off of the financial aid tab in Naviance. Don’t know if you have access to that or not. They were not necessarily accurate but in terms of “is it bigger than a breadbox” or not estimate, it was fine.</p>