@NSH420 have you visited all the schools? My D is not apply to Drexel, but did apply and was admitted to Northeastern and Temple. NEU would cost us about 40k in loans. At Temple she also has the Presidential Scholarship which means no loans because we can cover everything the scholarship does not. She is looking at mechanical engineering with the hope to eventually get a masters in biomedical engineering.
I really want Temple for her and the freedom of not worrying about living on a strict budget during school and for 10 years after! We have also looked to see if “eventually” a NEU degree would be worth more than Temple, but a lot of unknown factors make it hard to determine. I’ve told her that attitude and effort makes a bigger difference than the prestige of the university. I don’t know if she believes me at this point. Like your D, she would really like to go to the most prestigious option and loves the established co-op program.
I don’t know anything about animation except to say my brother has been a video game artist for over 20 years (for the last 5 plus he has worked for an online game called Rift). He was pushing my D to get a computer science degree saying his company and a lot of others would hire her in an instant and she could pretty much “name her price.” He probably has on uncle-rose-colored-glasses, but it does sound like the demand is there.
This loan repayment calculator was helpful for us, especially seeing what her salary would be need to be to comfortably make loan payments: http://www.finaid.org/calculators/loanpayments.phtml
Also, you didn’t mention it, but for us the reputation of Temple being dangerous was a concern. This article put a lot of those worries to rest: http://billypenn.com/2015/02/24/which-philadelphia-university-is-the-safest-where-is-crime-the-worst-the-data-will-surprise-you/
Good luck & aloha!