So, my baby girl is in NYC touring colleges, with quite an itinerary set up for her next 11 days:
Fordham
St John’s (NYC)
Hofstra
Adelphi
NYU (Tisch School of Arts)
Rutgers (New Brunswick campus)
So, why school in NYC? Because she wants to enter the TV/Film industry, and that’s where (along with LA), the TV/Film industry resides. Mom has family which lives in Brooklyn and N NJ (not far from New Brunswick), so if it is an issue, we can have Sophia live with them to gain residency. She already has a post-college job offer which is featured prominently in her CV - don’t know if that helps, but it can’t hurt.
Anyway, this is Sophia’s longest trip away from her parents in EVER but, really, I’m not worried at all. If there is one thing my high-energy, low-sleeping, vegetarian-only daughter will take to like a fish to water is a city where you can order vegetarian take out at 4 in the morning. Having been there with her before, I can tell you: Sophia just grooves to NYC.
Anyway, wish her luck and I’ll send her the link to this thread!
If she wants high energy, I would not recommend Adelphi, Hofstra and St John’s (I used to live walking distance from Adelphi). The first 2 sell themselves with their proximity to NYC but in reality they’re in the burbs and it takes almost an hour and around $10 to get from their campuses to Manhattan by bus shuttle and commuter train. St John’s is in the part of Queens farthest from Manhattan, 45+ minutes away by bus & subway.
Has she looked at Hunter College, one of the CUNY schools? They’re in Manhattan, have a film program and very affordable tuition, even for non-residents. They used to be very much a commuter school but now have residence halls.
Fordham Lincoln Center and NYU Tisch are both great high energy schools but not very affordable, though Fordham does offer scholarship money to students with high GPA+SAT scores.
Have you looked at the collegeconfidential .com discussion board, lots of threads about touring schools there.
Congratulations and good luck. Out=r owen MilliCal is just about to finish up her years at college, and I vividly remember taking her to places. I took her on a swing through upstate NY.
(I’m the only one in my family who didn’t attend Rutgers at some point. I used their library throughout my high school years, though. Great place. )
Fun. I have a film degree in the Midwest - and I graduated with a few people who went on to make their living in film and television - even with the disadvantage of going to a school in the Midwest (I ended up in the far more steady IT world). I would caution you that MOST students end up changing their major, so guide her to a school where her likely second or third choice major is also a possibility - an expensive NYU film degree isn’t very useful when after a semester of dealing with NYU film students and professors and classes you decide you really want to major in Anthropology.
Mine started as a PoliSci major - and I knew it wasn’t going to stick. Now its History, which I suspect would be the major all along. Too many future lawyers in the PoliSci program.
Very true, which is why she’s not visiting specialty film/art schools, Dangerosa. After all, given her arguing ability, she may wish to switch to pre-law.
But the child started directing when she was 9 and, on a trip to Los Angeles in 2013, actually received a job offer from a firm that specializes in the making of movie trailers. She has focused the last couple of years on doing “edits” (as she calls them), quick 20-60 second films which are set to music, focus a lot on the transitions between images and film, and… lately… beginning to tell a story. She has an IG account with about 2k followers, she does about 6-10/year, works in the theater department @ school, and it’s pretty obvious, even on the surface, that this is something she wants to do.
Don’t overlook Ithaca College. Most programs are kind of meh, but the Park School of Communication (which the film school is part of) is highly regarded. There is an extensive alumni network, and students in my son’s program (Writing for Film and TV) spend a semester in LA.
Also, the NY area schools you mentioned, with the exception of Rutgers, are not state schools. Residency doesn’t matter. Most states don’t make it easy to gain residency for the purpose of instate tuition. I second looking at College Confidential. It was useful when our kids were doing the college search.
My daughter looked at Ithaca - I think it was her second choice (it was my third, she got accepted by her and my first choice) - but its a long way out of NYC. Its a good safety school for someone with 3.something GPA and a ACT score less than 30/ SAT below 1400 interested in Film (or Music or Theatre) (NYU I know is a pain in the ass to get into - and then offers little in the way of aid to keep its ridiculous tuition/room and board rates low. And Film isn’t a degree you want to graduate with a lot of debt - many of my peers spent years working for almost free and waiting tables to make ends meet - hence me ending up in IT).
We also sent a student halfway across the country - we are Minnesotans and she ended up in Worcester, MA. There have been challenges with her being that far away and the culture change.
We (well, Laura, now) have family in the NYC area, which makes this a more natural fit.
Sophia has been to NYC before (probably a full month of her life) and absolutely adores it. Not a fan of Texas, so she is looking forward to a culture change, to be honest.
Visiting Adelphi today, Tisch School on Weds, and Rutgers on Friday. She wants to go back to StJ and buy some swag, that’s how much she liked it. Bothered by the fact that she likes St. Johns (153) more than Fordham (70), even though Fordham is a higher-ranked school. I told her that in a country with 6,000 colleges, the difference between 70 & 153 isn’t all that great - ones in the top 2%, the others in the top 3%. Also pointed out that Texas A&M is ranked 68 on that list, but that doesn’t make her want to live 4 years in College Station, TX, does it? And I told her that, most importantly, she needs to look for the best environment for Sophia, as a happy, contented Sophia at St Johns will do better than a stressed-out Sophia at Fordham.
She was able to meet up with an old friend of hers who moved away from San Antonio and just happened to be visiting NYC as well, so that was nice.
I can totally see her @ St Johns, to be honest. As to why she liked it so much, she is a 17yo girl and StJ looked more like a college campus “home” to her than the other two. Though she did really like Hofstra as well.
If she’s looking for a typical college campus, I strongly recommend that she look at Fordham Rose Hill’s gorgeous campus. It’s 18 minutes by train from midtown Manhattan, as opposed to St John’s where it takes 45-50 minutes to Manhattan.
St John’s is not a bad school, but it’s not really a school for high achievers like your daughter.
If she’s really looking for a campus then NYU will not appeal to her.
My daughter is the same. She also spent complete Summers away from home through high school. She’d spent plenty of time on the East Coast, its why she wanted to go to school there. It may still be hard. College is different. Being that far away from home for that long is hard.
I’m glad she went where she went, but don’t plan for smooth sailing - I hope you get smooth sailing, but don’t be blind to the tone in the voice that means “I could really use a care package” (she won’t need the r’s like you do in Worcester - and it is a place where they have gotten lost). Our relatives were not good enough when she ended up in the hospital wanting Mom - honestly, they weren’t even good enough for a long weekend. Be prepared for her facing discrimination - she’s from the South and Northerners can sometimes lump all Southerns as Trump loving evolution denying idiots (and college Freshman aren’t knowledgeable to know you need to exclude Austin from that generalization). She’ll likely get over all of it and be really happy with what she chooses - I just want you to be prepared for the downside. Also be prepared for mercurial switches in her attitude. One minute it was “I can’t wait until you visit me” - but during my visit it was a good thing I had a book, because she was busy with friends most of the time (that was October). By Thanksgiving she couldn’t wait to be home and I wasn’t sure she’d go back. My Christmas and finals it was a combination of stress and homesickness, and the moment she was home, wanting to return to her friends and her life out there.
We got lucky - by October she’d found a squad - there are six of them who will all room together in a suite next year. By Christmas she’d acclimated. I doubt I’ll get her home next Summer. I know someone else who wasn’t that lucky - although only four hours from home - she didn’t find good friends and is incredibly lonely and thinking of switching schools - the school she chose is excellent, she just hasn’t found her place there.
And I told her that, most importantly, she needs to look for the best environment for Sophia, as a happy, contented Sophia at St Johns will do better than a stressed-out Sophia at Fordham.