<p>What do you mean by “fun”? Keep in mind that at UCLA almost all of the activities, ranging from its outstanding art collection to its excellent musical theatre shows are priced for college students. Rather than having to shell out $100 on a quality seat, you can watch a slightly less sophisticated version of the same play for $5-$15. Want to see a live music show? No problem, there are a huge number in an around UCLA’s campus. </p>
<p>It sounds like you should be in NYC. I think 32K for 4 years is not awful, it’s debt, I get it, but it’s the price of a luxury car and because you only young once</p>
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<p>LA can be a really boring and lonely place until you make some friends. After though, you go to parties, concerts, movies, and a bunch of other types of events. If you join a group on campus, or just hang out with classmates, you shouldn’t have much difficulty making friends.</p>
<p>There are plenty of LA focused blogs that talk about events going on in the city including LAist and LAWeekly. Additionally, there are several Jazz concerts and other events that happen in Royce Hall. It’s really not a boring place to be if you know where to look.</p>
<p>LA is no doubt harder to get around without a car, but it’s making some major progress. The Expo line will be completed next year and that should be a huge step in improving LA’s transit. And other lines are being developed as we speak.</p>
<p>It sounds like you really want to go to Barnard, and I certainly consider it to be a fantastic school. You should think long and hard about turning down a full ride. Remember that loans come with interest. So it won’t be just 32k in loans. It could be 36k, or 40k. I’ve often told people that this is one of their first big decisions as an adult. So I would recommend thinking long and hard before you turn down the full ride.</p>
<p>Can you work in the summer to cover the loan?</p>
<p>I expected UCLA to have an amazing dance and music program, well I mean it is L.A. To my surprise the dance department was mediocre. Mostly cultural dancing and no ballet (except P.E. classes). I definitely rather spend money to watch a Broadway show vs. watching many “less sophisticated” ones haha but that’s just me.</p>
<p>I am pretty sure I can make any college into my “dream school.” I will just need to dig harder but it’s not impossible.</p>
<p>Hahaha I’m very sappy person. All that’s in my mind is. This is my only chance to be in NYC while this young. There is just so much out there for me (except I will be too poor to take advantage of those opportunities haha). Sure, I can always go back to NYC but it definitely wont be the same as living there as a college student.</p>
<p>UCLA is offering me a chance to intensely focus my studies. Any job I take will end up being extra money and by the end of 4 years, I might have a pretty good amount saved up.</p>
<p>I can do work study to cover around 2k but that is really unappealing. I currently work 15+ a week on top of dance practice and it’s just hectic. I can only imagine trying to pull off longer hours in college while doubling majoring and possibly a minor in something useless hahaha</p>
<p>I am working this summer but it’s more community service (which is a big part of me). I will be teaching low income kids in the silicon valley near my area. I wont make much but it is definitely worth it.</p>
<p>I think the real question is: Is NYC worth it? I just feel that my 2 days there gave me an impression that it is filled with opportunities (ones that are hard to come by). Everyone is somehow rich and you can make connections by even babysitting. Brand name internships are easier to come by and I will somehow become successful and filthy rich hahaha.</p>
<p>I am coming into Barnard with many expectations but if there is anyone here who lives/lived in NYC and can give me a reality check, it will be very helpful!</p>
<p>Living in NYC will make everybody poor, not filthy rich. </p>
<p>Actually California gave me more opportunities. Lived in and around NYC for 25 years. Had a lot of friends, but it was just working class. Came to CA 14 years ago, CA gave me more opportunities.</p>
<p>You can be working on Wall Street by going to either school. Don’t let the glitters on the Broadway fool you. To a student, its just glitters. NYC is for you to spend money, you need to climb over Million heads to make big money.</p>
<p>Can you be more specific about what specific opportunities you are hoping for in NYC? I’m confused because of the dichotomy between your major/minor – I can’t tell if you want to focus on dance or internships related to different career goals.</p>
<p>I can tell you that nothing comes by magic. My daughter always had at least two part time jobs, and sometimes more. </p>
<p>Of course things might change, but right now, what do you expect to be doing post-college? Career? Grad school? What sort of career goals would you have? </p>
<p>Haha this is not set in stone but I think I found my path.</p>
<p>undergrad --> grad —> work as an accountant for a long long long while to save a ton of $$ --> use my ton of $$ to build a performing arts studio for low income kids</p>
<p>In NYC, it just seems that everyone somehow gets brand name internships and so much support that it’s difficult to fail. To get into a prestigious grad, I definitely need those close connections +interships </p>
<p>What do you mean by a “brand name” internship? (I’m sorry, I’m the parent of a Barnard grad and I don’t have a clue what you are talking about)</p>
<p>What “close connections” are you talking about? </p>
<p>What sort of graduate program would you want? You don’t need graduate school to be an accountant – but if you attend Barnard, you probably will need to pay for supplemental course work or a certificate course after you graduate. See: <a href=“http://www.dca.ca.gov/cba/applicants/tip_sheet.pdf”>http://www.dca.ca.gov/cba/applicants/tip_sheet.pdf</a> for California educational requirements.</p>
<p>For the record, if you are currently working 15h/week, the 2K work study should be very easy to fit into your new schedule since it amounts to about 6-8h/week (half than what you currently work) and it’d provide you with the pocket money you’d need to enjoy NYC. Otherwise, your choice is between a show on the UCLA campus by future stars vs. zero show in NYC, not vs. a Broadway show.
To be an accountant, you need to work on a 5th year, which can be in grad school, and that year needs to be certified (meaning probably a CUNY or SUNY Albany or one of the few programs that are accredited for accounting in the State; SUNY Albany or Baruch for instance would be about $30,000 to add to your current bill. Check what the situation is with UCLA.)</p>
<p>Many of the work study jobs at Barnard pay barely above minimum wage - because of issues with her class schedule, my daughter didn’t come anywhere near earning her full work study grant her first two years. She managed to get a much better paying work study job as a research assistant at Columbia her third year – but I’m not sure that they would have even considered hiring a first year student for that job. Minimum wage in NYC is $8, so at that rate it is 250 hours to earn $2000 work study - or 125 hours per semester. </p>
<p>How much money do you think you can earn over the summer? You may find that Barnard’s estimate of costs for books and incidentals is less than what you will actually spend. You can get discount tickets to theater shows and events in NY through Barnard – so that’s not a huge barrier – I just think that you’ll find that other things cost more than you anticipated. </p>
<p>Does your financial aid package include a Barnard Perkins or college loan? Or just federal direct loans? Ordinarily, the maximum you can borrow in federal direct loans is $5500 – so basically I’m just asking whether you are sure that you will be able to borrow the full amount you need? </p>
<p>32K is manageable for student loans. We live in NYC. When D2 is home she babysits sometimes and makes over $15/hr. I know many parents post at babysitting and tutoring jobs at Barnard/Columbia. I just recently interviewed a Princeton graduate who is looking for a full time job in NYC. He is supporting himself in the mean time by tutoring. He is making close to $100/hr.</p>
<p>If you want to live and work in NYC some day, Barnard would be a better choice. As a dancer, you’ll have easier access to more studios. You could buy a monthly subway pass and easily get around NYC, whereas in LA you would need a car to get around. </p>
<p>A lot of companies recruit at Columbia. I am not familiar with Barnard and Columbia’s relationship when it comes to on campus recruiting. </p>
<p>Barnard and Columbia career services are separate. Barnard students may have access to some events sponsored by Columbia’s Career office, such as Career Fairs – but they don’t have access to LionShare, which is the Columbia system for recruitment and job postings.</p>
<p>It is very possible to make more money in NY – but the OP indicated that she wanted to limit the hours she works.</p>
<p>If the OP is going to want to have access to the dance studios, she is going to have to also pay studio fees for her classes. Currently Steps on Broadway charges $18 per class, $16/per class if the student buys a 10 class-series. She posted in another thread that her parents’ income is below poverty level. </p>
<p>Barnard’s academics are outstanding and also very rigorous – and if the OP wants to attend Barnard for the sake of the quality of the education she will receive there, then by all means she should choose Barnard. But she should expect to be working hard in class, and spending a lot of time out of class working to earn money . </p>
<p>She seems to want to go to Barnard for the “connections” and the “brand name” internships that “everybody” attends. That sounds more like a fantasy based on what she hopes and imagines, than reality. Barnard/Columbia is an extremely competitive environment filled with many highly motivated, pre-professional students. The competition of those elite internships she thinks she wants is pretty stiff. </p>
<p>Plus she says she wants to be an accountant— as far as I can tell, there are no undergraduate accounting courses offered at either Barnard or Columbia. So she’s either going to have to rethink career goals, or else rethink which school she wants to attend. I don’t think she could major in accounting at UCLA, either-- but it looks like she could minor in accounting, and she might be in a better position financially down the line to complete whatever post-grad coursework she would need to become a CPA. </p>
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<p>I just wanted to juxtapose these two paragraphs from different posts. I guess we were all thinking that you wanted to be some Wall Street tycoon. But accounting is just accounting; the best schools in the country for pounding out those in this field are the state schools like Cal State or the SUNY’s. You could probably train for this anywhere.</p>
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<p>This is undoubtedly your passion as you refer to it the most, even over your desire to be in a business field. Might this overtake everything else if you were to become really good?</p>
<p>You’re right about UCLA not having a particularly great dance program. Glorya Kaufman (spelling for both first and last?) wanted desperately to create an international dance program on the westcoast on the order of Juilliard. She’d been in negotiations for awhile with UCLA, in the meantime helping the U retrofit and fix-up the U’s dance building. </p>
<p>She wanted to give the U a boatload of cash, but felt UCLA was slowplaying her desires for LA to become a hub for dance (including ballet) housed at U, with even more specialized admissions for dancers in the department. </p>
<p>UCLA by nature slowplays potential large donors because it doesn’t want to be controlled by them. She felt the U was being too deliberate, so she took her money and established a program at USC.</p>
<p>(I can see the U wanting to slowplay large donors because of the above; also because the dance program would have created too specialized an admissions set for this dance program, which I’m sure the U felt would take away from the scholastic breadth that all its students have to partake. Arts colleges by nature are pretty much all arts in their curricula, and are less scholastic. UCLA didn’t want this. The same occurred with Iavone and Dr Dre and their music-based scholarship/program negotiations with UCLA, however in-depth they became, and likewise their talks subsequently fell through.) </p>
<p>The only thing I would tell you is that you can be take the charge in creating a better ballet program within the department at UCLA. You could create a campus group of those deeply interested in ballet, and you can be the leader of change in UCLA dance. </p>
<p>But either way, if you feel you need to be in NYC, perhaps you should go for it.</p>
<p>If you go to school in NYC, how much of discretionary income will you have for taking advantage of the city’s cultural offerings (which it seems are the biggest appeal of the city for you?). As a student, there will be opportunities for reduced price or even some free tickets, but you still need money. Also, do students at Barnard tend to take advantage of the city or do they remain primarily campus-centric?</p>
<p>And, what about travel to and from home? </p>
<p>My D goes to NYU, I think NYC is one of the world’s greatest cities, yes, it’s a great place to live at any age, but it is expensive, and it will always be there! </p>
<p>Let me add this – at least at NYU, my daughter has traipsed around Manhattan and other boroughs as part of classroom assignments (hers were mostly arts-related) and had an internship as part of a class experience (there were more internship opportunities than she took advantage of). So, the college itself used the city setting as part of its academic program – and because NYC is so walkable and accessible via public transportation, it is easy for students to navigate. I have no idea if Barnard or UCLA offer this same kind of experience, but it might be worth checking into.</p>
<p>Hi everyone! Again, thank you for all the amazing responses 
I am currently reading through everything and trying my back to write up the responses. This forum has definitely shaped my decision. </p>
<p>It is true that I won’t need grad school to be an accountant. But like I said my plan isn’t set in stone. Not sure what job I would get after school but all I know that it is going to be either finance or accounting. This might be a very weird reason for grad school but I’ll shoot anyways: for some reason, I actually like school. I definitely will be maximizing my time in school which will be lead to me attending grad school.</p>
<p>About summer, this year I will be teaching low income kids math and ballet! Originally, I was suppose to be in Hong Kong teaching, but I just thought it would be much better to do it within my community. This is very weird and I haven’t even started yet but I just believe this is a great thing. Helping low income children is exactly what I want to do in the future but being able to contribute just a little currently feels great! If this summer works out, I will definitely come back! Yes, it is low pay but it’s for a great cause So to answer your question, I can save up for the summer, but it will be very little.</p>
<p>I am not sure where I want to live in the future. Really, I will go anywhere my job is.</p>
<p>Though ballet is my passion and I would have pursue it as a profession, I don’t see myself doing that anymore. Again, I would give all that up to build a studio for low-income kids. I just feel that so much was given to me and I want to give back.</p>
<p>If I go to NYC, I definitely will worry about money and most likely become so stingy that I can’t even enjoy the city like I should. Again, after my stay in Barnard, I am definitely coming in with many expectations and some of them are too far fetched. Almost all Barnard students told me about the great connections they made like being able to get an internship (even after the deadline) because of their connections to profs. Maybe it was just the people that were around me, but it somehow seemed like everyone had some mind of amazing internship opportunity. Some are working with JP Morgan and other big names. I realize that college is what you make it out to be but it just seems like NYC just has more opportunities.</p>
<p>Okay, so it was very late at night and this might be a crazy idea but here we go:</p>
<p>Plan:
First 2 years, go to UCLA and treat it as a free community college
-take accounting courses
-select courses diligently so I can transfer credits
-start saving and take up a small job (because I won’t have to worry about spending money)
-ease my parents into the idea of me moving away (they don’t speak English so it’s a difficult decision for me to leave)
-my scholarship requires me to keep at least a 3.5 gpa so I will be a competitive transfer</p>
<p>Last 2 years, transfer to Barnard</p>
<p>This is a simpleton’s plan and there are too many flaws. Like, housing for Barnard transfers isn’t guarantee. But please let me know what you think of this plan. Thank you!</p>