<p>Herseypie,</p>
<p>Unfortunately, you heard right. Occasionally, a student “lucks” out and gets a handsome financial aid package, where the student may have both financial need and a meritorious record. (Keep in mind that the latter historically appears to be the key factor in getting aid for NYU.). Many reports here indicate that most get nice awards based primarily on merit and their attractiveness to NYU. This is not to say that may not be changing, though I have to wonder where NYU would come up with the extra money for FA in these hard, budget cutting times.</p>
<p>Generally, students getting $25,000 a year in scholarship or grant money are considered the “chosen,” while a select group, apparently a very small group of students even get awards in the $30,000 range. Keep in mind that as of NOW, without calculating in inflation, the four years of education at NYU cost around $220,000-240,000 for non-commuters. Even with the higher amounts of award money, anywhere say from $100,000 to $120,000 (approx) in financial award money (grants and
scholarships), these top tier students still have to pay $100,000+ out of pocket. Yikes! Then the vast majority have even less aid than this.</p>
<p>The reality is NYU is a very expensive school to attend for the majority of students.
Many will graduate with mega student loans, have to sacrifice personally or see their family members/ parents sacrifice for their NYU education, or are students with personal or family affluence.</p>