@bisouu - I totally agree! my D looked into it for next year (you can’t start until jr hem year at NYU)but then she got the study abroad (which will be awesome in it’s own right) Maybe senior year 
Congrats to your D on all the cool things she has going- LOVE to see how she has created opportunities!
I will chime in here to add another perspective: it isn’t s bad thing for your student to have some skin in the game. Our kids WILL have loans - there are too many of them and not enough $$ from us. H and I are helping with payments but they will he expected to shoulder some of the payment burden post-graduation. We also expect them to earn some $$ for their extras along the way. For us, we want them vested financially.
As the parent of 2 NYU students, and the wife of a CMU grad, I’ll offer my perspective.
First, to answer the OP’s question. We afforded NYU by mostly using current income and some savings. Essentially we were in a position that we were able to live off my husband’s income by watching our spending. My income over the years went towards college and saving for college. The year my oldest d went off to NYU, the stock market nose dived and some of her college funds lost value. My mother stepped forward and told us not to cash out and lose money, and she ended up helping gift some money for tuition to both girls. So both girls are debt free with a little cushion of saved money. We would not have allowed them to graduate as a MT and art major with debt.
For us, as we started the process, we knew that we would not qualify for any financial aid. We had two incomes which together disqualified us, but live in a NYC suburb, which means that our expenses are high. So our plan from the beginning was to seek out schools that give merit aid without need.
Another criteria was fit. For D in MT ( and her younger art major sister) fit was several things. A school in or very close to a big city was number one. A school that would be academically challenging was number 2. A school with top notch training and a talented pool of students was number 3.
So we ruled out all but one of the ivies because they would be full pay. We did keep Barnard and Columbia on the list since they were local and if we took the financial risk there and it was a struggle, she could have commuted from home.
In the end she got a lot of merit money and was accepted everywhere she applied (NYU was the only audition school), but it came down to two choices: NYU (with merit $ from Steinhardt) and Barnard.
For us, NYU was the cheaper program. She was torn between the academic appeal of Barnard/ Columbia and the training at NYU. NYU won out and she is happy with her decision. So much so that she may be applying there again for grad school.
@theaterwork Now to answer your question about prestige and name.
Yes, I think both entered into the picture. For one thing, the prestige of living and going to school in NYC was and is important to both D’s. Not in the sense of being able to say they are in NYC, but what they have actually gained from bring here. Being in NYC has allowed D to have a great resume and great experiences. While at NYU she interned at Sony, a subsidiary company of Sony owned by Tony Bennett’s son and manager, Dreamworks theatre, and Scott Rudin productions. Immediately after graduation she had an apprenticeship at Telsey casting, followed by a job at CAA. Especially since she chose not to pursue performance after graduation, her experience in these internships, the prestige of these companies and the credibility of being an NYU grad did open doors. Plus at NYU she added to her BM degree two minors: English lit and the Business of Entertainment, Media and Technology. Her experience has been that people think that she is bright and talented by the name recognition and reputation NYU has in the entertainment industry.
D graduated 4 years ago and is considering pursuing a full time MBA. There prestige and name enter into the picture again. She is considering top programs that have connections to top MBA internships. Again, as someone with an “alternative career path” I don’t think she would have as much credibility if she went to a lesser ranked college academically. She is currently attending a weekend program that she was accepted into that advocates for diversity in the business world and is a recruiting tool for top MBA programs. She texted to say that everyone there (mostly women and minority students) all went to highly ranked colleges.
So, yes, I do think name and prestige can be important for years to come, especially if down the road one ends up not pursuing performance.
My husband is a good example of “in years to come.” My husband was accepted into CMU as a MT major class of 1983. After two years he switched out of the program full time and was able to pursue an economics major as well. To this day, having a degree from CMU has helped him get jobs in the real estate/ finance sector in NYC. Yes, his years and years of experience in real estate got him his current job, but all the ivy and near ivy educated finance people who interviewed him (some years younger) all asked him about CMU back in the day. In the end, it was important that he went to a school with a good name. Now we can talk about how elitist that all sounds, but in the end, it pays the bills. (I myself have two CUNY degrees and have done fine in life!) And my husband of course laughs that it was his MT skills that got him in.
Being an RA is a fine idea depending on the school. My daughter applied, was selected and then turned it down based on the experiences of her upperclassmen MT peeps at her university. Most of them dropped the RA position after one semester. There were mandatory meetings, training and schedules that require their presence and kept them from accepting casting. It’s a shame because it’s a great way to save money on room and board. Even my STEM daughter at another school decided not to apply to be an RA because of the time required to perform the job. She didn’t feel like a double major and leadership positions in several important extra curricular clubs were worth giving up to be an RA. It is something to definitely look into at an individual school to see if it can work though!
As a former RA & dorm director, I can’t imagine mt students being able to commit with their crazy schedules. Anyone have a mt student do this, and at what schools? We are looking for ways to help with costs. D is willing to work VERY hard. Any other great ways undergrads have made $ while keeping a mt schedule?
Here’s the $64,000 question. It’s one thing to go into debt for the Harvards. Most people would risk a few loans for themselves and their kids if the opportunity came.
But for the majority of Americans the question is do you go into debt, especially for arts, for the schools that don’t have name recognition, cachet, or industry connnection? I believe that is what’s on people’s minds.
The programs might be very good. Excellent in fact. But what @uskoolfish is describing is not the norm; the soul searching is not on prestigious schools and their value but the decision to take a 40-50,000 per year burden on an ordinary school. It’s not just a question of MT but of all programs at US schools. Which is what @Walker1194 was probably referring to.
I agree to some extent with @unskoolfish. If you can buy the prestige, buy it. Not everyone is allowed to get in which is why there is prestige to the school! But that only covers about 4-9% of the college population.
The other >90% have to carefully consider if the money is going to be productively spent.
It would be helpful to hear from graduates of the NON top 10 schools as to what choice they made and their perspective on debt. Did they feel their choice advantaged or disadvantaged their careers?
No offense to those frequent posters who are at the top, but we know that perspective well. If any poster could speak to or from the other 90% of us, that would be great.
I’m not the person you are hoping will respond. Nonetheless, I can say 100% that we would have paid the same amount for tuition/room/board, taken out the same amount in loans, etc. no matter what college our children attended (as well as no matter what major they chose). We didn’t pay more depending on any sort of prestige. We didn’t care where the girls went to college, as long as they were happy with their choice. Same with major. We paid for them to get an education. The worth of the money spent had nothing to do with where they went or what they studied. I know not everyone feels this way, but I can say we surely did.
@mtmomofone … at my D’s school, I think being an RA would be next to impossible. In fact, continuing to work her part time job at a MT student has been rough. In fact, last month, D was only able to work only TWO hours at her job due to rehearsals and school commitments. Crazy!
(Luckily, D works in the Theatre Dept. and in her particular job, they are very forgiving because they know first hand how rough the schedules are.)
@uskoolfish I appreciate you sharing your story and respect you for approaching the “elephant in the room” in regards to the name /prestige factor. We all know it comes into play most of the time when choosing these schools. Really how couldn’t it? There is an elitist factor as you said in all of it but I am not naive to the fact that that’s how the world works. I realize you live near NYC too which makes sense that if you could offer it then you did.
Mt is unfortunately an expensive field to get into. It does sometimes come down to money & as someone once told me “the have and the have nots” etc. My D and I have had many conversations about this lately. Some of them quite heated actually about her not being able to apply to schools that are big ticket price. She is annoyed by this as she has in her mind that, as you stated, the school name and prestige opens doors. She fears the lesser known schools as she thinks the connections won’t be there or the training won’t be enough & it will be bad because no one will respect her degree. I don’t know what to tell her about all that. She knows our situation & knows what she has to work with. To be honest if I could convince her to do another major I would. But I won’t do that since I truly believe she is a talented girl & will make her way if she is determined enough. If not, at least she tried.
I will say it is disheartening sometimes but I know we’re not the only ones dealing with this & not everyone goes to prestigious well known schools. We have some options of schools that offer great training and aren’t breaking the bank or requiring mounds of debt so we will just pray she gets into one of those.
You just described my predicament exactly! We are somewhere in between but closer to the “have nots”. I have been so filled with anxiety thru this process, as my talented d has worked so hard for years, so I feel we can’t let her down now…we are on the home stretch! We will take some loans but not a crazy amount. We are going to live very lean and make it work. It is not her fault we have not been the best money managers and she needs to have her shot at success. As parents we owe our kids a good solid education. After that, the rest is up to them. In the end, all the schools who offered her a ton of money were program no’s but our in state schools gave her next to nothing despite outstanding academics, etc. Very disappointed. So in the end, we would be paying far more for a state school than would be worth it when we thought it would be close to a full ride, so that gives me peace with our decision. Good luck and thanks to all the hard working parents out there who have been so kind and encouraging. You all are the best!
Those kids who attend an expensive school are not necessarily from financially well off families. For some of us, it is very challenging to pay for college, but we find a way given this priority. I just wanted to say that not all the kids in expensive schools are from well to do families.
In the end it is a personal choice and how one prioritizes things if one us lucky enough to have enough money to be full pay, but not enough money to be financially secure. In my community, many families could pay for more expensive schools based on two income families IF they chose to do so. Our money has gone into camps, music and art lessons, dance, summer programs and college. It did not go into buying a bigger house, renovating our bathrooms, luxury vacations or new cars.
Because D’s are full pay, their friends would often think we were wealthy and must live a lavish lifestyle. That was until they would actually visit us. Then I’d roll up in my old car to pick them up at the train and take them to our humble home. Kids would outright exclaim that it was so much smaller than they expected. Or they’d say how much cozier it was than there’s.
So as @soozievt has stated, not everyone who goes to private colleges are wealthy. Some yes, others have parents who are working hard to pay full tuitions, and others have parents working hard to meet EFC and got enough financial aid to make it work. Many of d’s friends have some student loans as well, but not crazy amounts.
We might be able to squeeze 6 people into our tiny living room to celebrate our final tuition payment, but one of you will need to sit on the floor.
After a visit this weekend to one school and three more in the next two weeks we are juggling the wants/needs/fit etc of all. D is being very diplomatic and as the financial aid and merit/talent awards are coming in the top list keeps Changing. Luckily there is no where she would not like to go on out list of 8 mt program acceptances. They all have merit in her eyes for different reasons and she is well aware that the very $$$ schools just might not be in our reach financially at all so she is still keeping an open mind. In three weeks decisions will be made and I am confident that she will be happy with whatever choice she makes. She is willing to help as much as she can with work/study, summer work and has even offered to let us sell her beloved convertible if we need to to put toward tuition. ( ok… It’s not a super fancy new convertible. But in great shape for 12 years old as could fetch an ok price once it stops snowing and the sun actually comes out in our neck of the woods. The fact that she is willing to give up the car with the plates that read DRMAQUEEN and she even posed with in her senior photos to bring a bike to school makes me a little more willing to do what we need to do to make her dream come true.
I don’t even own a home anymore! 
@theaterwork You mention that your D isn’t that happy with the situation that she may not be able to attend a “name” college or program and so on. In my view, anyone can succeed no matter where they go to school. It is best to accept the situation and make the most of it. My kids had plenty of college friends whose parents paid for their college summers and/or who paid for living expenses once they graduated college, neither of which were the situation my kids had. My kids NEVER complained or bemoaned this fact. They got jobs in their respective fields every summer during the college years and paid for their own living expenses away from home those summers, as well as supported themselves following their final graduations from their respective educational programs. This was the expectation and there was nary a complaint and it didn’t matter that some friends’ situations were different. In the end, success really rides with the individual and making the most of opportunities they are given, whatever they may be.
@theaterwork - Perhaps a way to approach this is to allow her to audition for 1 or 2 name schools she really loves that are a financial big reach WITH the understanding that she must get x $$ to attend or get the cost down to x $$ per year or else it is off the table. In that way, she can apply for and audition for her dream schools and will not have that “what if” lingering in the back of her mind. You may even want to put it in writing and both sign it, so that if she gets accepted, you both remember what the agreement was about cost. This way she can test the waters to see what is possible. This still allows you to make sure she understands the financial realities but she won’t resent or always have that “what if” in the back of her mind. This may require some compromises on where else she can apply due to application fees and audition schedules. But she will have to prioritize. Sometimes, as has been seen here on CC, some of the most expensive schools become some of the most affordable schools by the time it is all said and done. So it may be worth giving one or two a try to see what happens. It may be a long shot. And she needs to understand all the pieces have to fall into place (acceptance and affordability), but she will appreciate being allowed to apply for and reach for her dream.
Of course, you know your D best. And for some students, it may be best not to have that option at all in case they do get in but the $ isn’t there. It alls depends on how you feel she will handle it best. But for some, being able to test the waters and see what could happen is all they really want. And deep down they understand the realities of what they can do once all the results are in.
Another suggestion regarding the desire to attend a “name” school is to have her consider applying for grad school instead of undergrad. The cost to get an MFA would generally be less than the BFA due to the shorter time frame and stipends that are often available. Not every actor who says NYU in their Playbill bio went there as an undergrad
That’s how we did it at our house. We were OK with spending the $ on the app/prescreen fees and visiting/auditioning at two of “those” schools. S understood, that if he was accepted, the money would be the deciding factor. It SORTA took care of the “what if” conundrum (passed prescreen, but denied from both), but then it was, “I wonder what would have happened if we hired a coach?” If you give a mouse a cookie, . . .
S was totally OK with that understanding. We also made it clear to him - and brothers - that he was free to come up with the difference if he felt that strongly - get a job, enter competitions, write essays for scholarships, etc. But apparently it didn’t mean THAT much to him (or his brothers).
@mtmcmt, you said, “It would be helpful to hear from graduates of the NON top 10 schools as to what choice they made and their perspective on debt. Did they feel their choice advantaged or disadvantaged their careers?
No offense to those frequent posters who are at the top, but we know that perspective well. If any poster could speak to or from the other 90% of us, that would be great.”
Here’s part of the problem. I bet you can’t get any two people on this board, let alone a majority, to agree what the “top 10” schools are, which makes it impossible to list 11 down. There is no ranking that people agree with. Moreover, there are so many confounding variables that go into making a career (drive, looks, inherent talent, connections made in and out of school, being in the right place at the right time, race, etc.), you could never tease out a cause and effect. (Can you tell I’m married to a statistician?)
What @monkey13 said and worse yet… the majority of the participants in this forum are the parents of prospects, or student participants in the college process few of whom continue to post once they are off to college and then a very small (count them on one hand) number of graduates. Even within that context, the same usual suspects of schools come up more often than not depending on the year. But there are also years when a school comes out of the blue for one reason or the other and is talked about a lot thanks normally to one enthusiastic poster. The only conclusion you can make is that that other than at the obvious well-established programs that a large number think they need to apply to for whatever reason, CC love is primarily about expressing beauty in the eyes of the beholder.
Thanks @vvnstar for your suggestions. I don’t mean to make my D sound like she’s unreasonable, she isn’t . She’s just having a hard time getting out of her “star struck” phase about a few schools. We are going to let her audition for one or two perhaps that are stretches. But no more. I have to schedule and travel to auditions that are the best fit in all ways first and then if there’s room she can try out at a few financial reaches. …