CUNY or SUNY. Please Help

natantantan
Sun, 27 Apr 2014 15:02:13 +0000

Hi I am a senior in NYC and want to major in Computer Science. Right now my choice is between CUNY CCNY and SUNY Stony Brook.

CCNY - Great school for CS and ABET credited. Upon graduation I will be completely debt free. Absolutely non- existent social life. Will have to commute 1 hour back and forth everyday between home and the college.

Stony Brook. Also great CS school. It’s considered the best CS SUNY school. I will graduate with $40-50k debt after all four years. Will live on campus and in a dorm.

Originally I was considering CCNY because the debt free aspect is extremely appealing. On top of that, for computer science, name of school or even GPA doesn’t really matter its all about what you can actually do and your internship. So graduating from both school should net me pretty much similar jobs.

However I am an extremely shy and introverted person and this is something I desperately want to fix. I made some progress in high school but I feel like CCNY would just act as an extenuation of High School. If I went to CCNY i would have to live at home with my parents (which sucks), would lose a lot of social footing/progress, and would generally be unhappy.

If I went to SUNY happiness wouldn’t be guaranteed obviously but I would stop being so sheltered by my parents and would be able to finally have some freedom and live like an actually person. I feel like a dorm life would really help me get out of introverted shell and help me work on my social skills.

Now I am leaning more towards SUNY as I feel this college experience really is worth the $40-50k in debt as it will completely shape me as a person and my future. Social skills are very important in life and if I go to CUNY I feel like I would regress and become even more shy and secluded. Also a lot of people graduate with 200k in debt so 40k isn’t that bad. Plus I don’t want to be stingy and miss out on a once in a lifetime experience because I was stingy with money.

so

TL;DR Is it worth it to graduate with 40k in debt as opposed to being debt free in order to gain the “college experience”