I am in the midst of applying to colleges right now and while I absolutely love NYU but they are notoriously bad at giving merit/financial aid. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions of great schools in big cities (that are not impossible to get into such as UPenn, Harvard, Vanderbilt, etc) that give good financial aid?
USC? BU?
Temple: considerably cheaper to begin with, and fairly generous with merit aid to high-stat applicants. Philly is much less expensive than NYC, and so housing costs off-campus will be much lower.
Not BU… like NYU, known for very poor financial aid. If you’re high stats and interested in co-op, look at Northeastern
Not private and a step down prestige wise but a very good school is the University of Pittsburgh. I only know about NYU from what I’ve seen here on CC and from pictures but I have visited Pitt and found it to be very much an urban city campus much like what NYU looks like online. Carnegie Mellon is near by (you can walk there) but has a more traditional private school feel. If you have the stats to get into NYU you might consider Pitt a match or even a safety.
Fordham Lincoln Center and Tulane come to mind as well.
“Not BU… like NYU, known for very poor financial aid. If you’re high stats and interested in co-op, look at Northeastern”
Actually, these are the only two schools that were over $40,000 base price where we were not offered any merit based financial aid (the only other school where we weren’t offered aid was McGill, but since my daughters have dual citizenship it would be under C$20,000 total per year without aid). We didn’t apply to NYU but if we had I am sure it would have been the third.
The problem that I have with the original question is that there are too many schools to suggest. OP, can you help us narrow down the list some by saying a bit more about what you want in a school? Also, it would be helpful to know your budget.
I see from another thread that you have an unweighted 3.95 which would make McGill almost a safety assuming that your SAT or ACT is similarly excellent. Financial aid at McGill is unlikely, but the base price will be quite a bit lower than NYU (and the Canadian dollar is still in the dumps right now).
To my mind, NYU is like a large flagship state school, set in NYC, minus the football team. In other words, it has a wide range of offerings, a spread-out campus, excellent professors, and very little to nothing to join it together as a community. Plus it’s really expensive.
If you want to be in NYC–and all that offers–and want to pay very little money–graduate with zero debt–with stats like yours, you have a good shot at the Macaulay Honors Program. https://macaulay.cuny.edu/
It offers full tuition, plus a stipend, and other benefits. Kids they accept have IVY stats and they go on to top-notch careers and grad schools.
Heads up: the application deadline is soon. (I think the early deadline is to grab the Ivy Stats kids early.)
You apply to one of the CUNY campuses (some are very Hogwarts looking and some are very modern). Brooklyn is known for its writing program. Queens has a great music program. City College has engineering – and more. Much more. Look carefully at the CUNY site because it’s a full university system with many sub colleges. You can search here to figure out what might interest you – http://www2.cuny.edu/admissions/undergraduate/explore/programs/
Best of luck.
What do you like about NYU?