CUNY Macaulay Honors College (New York, York: apartments, how much, dorms)

[babadi]

Originally Posted by Castro Viejo

Since CUNY is a public school its preference will be to select and admit New York State residents. It may be different for the Honors College, but I highly doubt that. If this program is as competitive as you say it is, and if you have the grades and the application to get into this program as an out of state applicant, that means you can probably get into a pretty good school.

This could be true about CUNY, I don't know. But on my SUNY campus, there was a strong push to recruit out-of-state students -- they were definitely not disadvantaged in the admissions process. Not only did they pay more tuition, but a larger percentage of out-of-staters can be touted a sign of prestige.

And being from New Jersey, Rutgers College at Rutgers-New Brunswick is an excellent state school. Certainly better than many, rather most, SUNY campuses in my opinion. That's Rutgers College and only Rutgers College in New Brunswick. The rest of the Rutgers colleges (the Newark College, etc.) are are pretty mediocre.

This is a really good point; I missed that the OP was from NJ. Rutgers in New Brunswick actually is a fine school that arguably has a more established name than any public school in NY. Definitely worth considering for an in-stater.

[jtan]

Sounds like someone's trying awfully hard to justify why $100,000+ of debt right out of college is worth it in the long run; and even harder to put down what is known as a very reputable program to many employers in New York City. I graduated from Hunter College in Macaulay in 2007 with a BS in Accounting and attended Kellogg the next semester along side hundreds of super elite egoists who were over $100,000 in debt or were lucky enough to have parents who paid every cent of their education who felt like they were somehow better than me because of where they went to school (even though we ended up in the exact same boat).

I agree that the school one attends does matter, but to call Macaulay "mediocre" is nothing short of ignorant. In fact, it epitomizes it. I was accepted to a plethora of ivy league schools right out of high school. I chose not to attend to prove elitist jerks wrong. Not really. I decided not to attend because I had a decision to make: pay in excess of $100,000 to end up where I knew I would be all along or pay nothing to end up in the exact same place as all of my friends who thought that ivy league was the way to go. In all fairness to them though, many of them weren't accepted to Macaulay to begin with, so it's not like they had a choice. I'm not saying that the criteria for Macaulay is higher than any ivy league school or that they're more selective, but they are definitely more limited in terms of the amount of applicants they can accept.

Now, am I the only one from Macaulay to get into a top-tiered business/graduate school? Absolutely not. Not even close. In fact, I'd have a harder time picking out people from my class who didn't get accepted into the business/graduate school of their choice.

My advice: if you're lucky enough to get into Macaulay, definitely go for it. The money you'll save during your four years at undergraduate school will be more than sufficient to fund any graduate school of your choice.

[Mary543]

And being from New Jersey, Rutgers College at Rutgers-New Brunswick is an excellent state school. Certainly better than many, rather most, SUNY campuses in my opinion. That's Rutgers College and only Rutgers College in New Brunswick. The rest of the Rutgers colleges (the Newark College, etc.) are are pretty mediocre.

I do agree that Rutgers is an good school, and have looked into it. The problem for me is that it does not offer a major in Speech Language Pathology or Communication Disorders. So that really knocks out Rutgers for me.

Sounds like someone's trying awfully hard to justify why $100,000+ of debt right out of college is worth it in the long run; and even harder to put down what is known as a very reputable program to many employers in New York City. I graduated from Hunter College in Macaulay in 2007 with a BS in Accounting and attended Kellogg the next semester along side hundreds of super elite egoists who were over $100,000 in debt or were lucky enough to have parents who paid every cent of their education who felt like they were somehow better than me because of where they went to school (even though we ended up in the exact same boat).

I agree that the school one attends does matter, but to call Macaulay "mediocre" is nothing short of ignorant. In fact, it epitomizes it. I was accepted to a plethora of ivy league schools right out of high school. I chose not to attend to prove elitist jerks wrong. Not really. I decided not to attend because I had a decision to make: pay in excess of $100,000 to end up where I knew I would be all along or pay nothing to end up in the exact same place as all of my friends who thought that ivy league was the way to go. In all fairness to them though, many of them weren't accepted to Macaulay to begin with, so it's not like they had a choice. I'm not saying that the criteria for Macaulay is higher than any ivy league school or that they're more selective, but they are definitely more limited in terms of the amount of applicants they can accept.

Now, am I the only one from Macaulay to get into a top-tiered business/graduate school? Absolutely not. Not even close. In fact, I'd have a harder time picking out people from my class who didn't get accepted into the business/graduate school of their choice.

My advice: if you're lucky enough to get into Macaulay, definitely go for it. The money you'll save during your four years at undergraduate school will be more than sufficient to fund any graduate school of your choice.

Thank you for posting. I'm really glad to hear the opinion of someone that attended the Macaulay Program. It is definitely good to hear that after you graduate your options are not limited even though you didn't go to an Ivy League or top School.

I do have a question for you though. You went to Hunter, which is the hardest of the Macaulay Schools to get into. If I did not attend Hunter (but went to a different CUNY) would my opportunities after graduating be tremendously different? I know you can only apply to one Macaulay college, so I am trying to decide which one would be best to apply to. I know if I could get into Hunter it would obviously be the best for me to apply to. But from what I have heard it is very competitive to get into (even more so than the others). So would it be better to apply to one of the easier to get into Macaulay Schools, or is it not worth attending the program if you don't go to Hunter?

And if the opportunities are not tremendously different depending on which of the CUNY Macaulay Schools you go to, which one would you say is the easiest to get into of the 4 that I listed? And which to are in the middle?

Thank you so much for your help everyone! It is greatly appreciated.

[Castro Viejo]

Originally Posted by babadi

This could be true about CUNY, I don't know. But on my SUNY campus, there was a strong push to recruit out-of-state students -- they were definitely not disadvantaged in the admissions process. Not only did they pay more tuition, but a larger percentage of out-of-staters can be touted a sign of prestige.

You must have been at Binghamton around the late 1990s into the early 2000s?

There was a push at SUNY to increase the number of out-of-state students being admitted to their prorgams. Part of it was to increase cash flow for the system (the average NYS resident at the time paid $3,000-$5,000 a year for SUNY while the out-of-state residents paid triple that amount) and part of it was to increase, as you noted, the system's national reputation.

Binghamton is certainly the most selective of the SUNY campuses, but oddly enough, the most comprehensive are Buffalo and Stony Brook (the only two Carnegie Class 1 institutions and the only two SUNY campuses admitted to the Association of American Universities).

[Castro Viejo]

Originally Posted by jtan

Sounds like someone's trying awfully hard to justify why $100,000+ of debt right out of college is worth it in the long run; and even harder to put down what is known as a very reputable program to many employers in New York City. I graduated from Hunter College in Macaulay in 2007 with a BS in Accounting and attended Kellogg the next semester along side hundreds of super elite egoists who were over $100,000 in debt or were lucky enough to have parents who paid every cent of their education who felt like they were somehow better than me because of where they went to school (even though we ended up in the exact same boat).

Your presumptions and lack of an ability to assess globally are amusing. Have any of these "super elite egoists" come up to you, pointed and laughed at the fact that you went to Hunter College? I doubt that. Have any of these apparently privileged people come up to you to discuss how their parents funded their education and trusts? I doubt that. Sounds to me like you've got a chip on your shoulder.

But congratulations on attending Kellogg. It's an elite business school, as you know, and you'll have doors open up for your on that fact alone.

Originally Posted by jtan

I agree that the school one attends does matter, but to call Macaulay "mediocre" is nothing short of ignorant.

If you read back to my posts, not once did I label the Honors College "mediocre." It's obviously anything but mediocre, however, I did write that the CUNY system as a whole was mediocre. And that was being generous.

Originally Posted by jtan

Now, am I the only one from Macaulay to get into a top-tiered business/graduate school? Absolutely not. Not even close. In fact, I'd have a harder time picking out people from my class who didn't get accepted into the business/graduate school of their choice.

It's not about you or your class. This should be about a top-down evaluation of the degree that the university generates and what it can and cannot do for its alumni. To say that "I'm successful and most of my class is as well" is simply not a rigorous proof of why one should attend. The program's track record of about 10 years might, but how does this stack up against well-established and well-regarded universities that have been around for over 150 years? Or in Harvard's case, over 350 years?

[biggyboy]

To answer your original question, Queens, Hunter, and Brooklyn are the more selective CUNYs of your bunch. Lehman is not only easier to get into, but its Honors college division is also less selective on admissions. I think it really depends where you live. If you live in Queens, go to Queens. In my opinion, for your major it doesn't really matter which of the 4 Macaulay CUNYs you'll go to. Certainly if you live in Brooklyn it will not be worth it traveling to the Bronx or Queens for school. You will end up hating it. Just make the most of your experience wherever you are. Also, I think you should check out the message boards on collegeconfidential.com and look up CUNY Honors, it'll probably be more informative and you'll find lots of similar people in your shoes. Good luck!

--P.S. Hunter dorms for Honors students are free. They are in really bad condition, however, but they use one of NYU's old dorms and it actually requires one to take the train to get to campus (however, it is walking distance from Baruch). City College has dorms for which you have to pay (because they were just built less than 2 years ago). I've heard Queens and Baruch looking into building dorms but there are already 2 near Baruch and another building which just finished renovated which was bought by NYU! So..tough luck. I don't know what will happen in the future concerning the housing situation. But so far, Hunter and City are the only two you can count on if you're really interested in that.

[Mary543]

Thank you for all of that information. How much less selective do you think Lehman actually is? The reason I wonder is because I saw this on their website:

Who is eligible? Only entering freshmen are eligible. High school seniors with a combined SAT or ACT score of 1250 or better, a high school average of 90 or above, and who are in the upper 25th percentile of their graduating high school class will be considered.

So considering they only will consider students with a average of 90 or above, wouldn't this mean that they are pretty selective as well? I know that the Macaulay Program as a whole has an average of a 93.8, couldn't Lehman fit right into that since they won't even look at anyone with an average under a 90?

So from what I see Lehman does have a similar GPA requirement in comparison to the other 3, but does Lehman accept a lot larger percent of its applicants? If so, by how much?

I live in NJ, so no matter which of the campuses I attended it would be a bit of a commute. But on the Lehman website one of the bullets under financial benefits is "option of residential housing". What does that mean? From what you said it sounds like Lehman doesn't have any dorms, yet they give you an option for residential housing. If you could clear that up I'd appreciate it!

[Castro Viejo]

Originally Posted by Mary543

I live in NJ, so no matter which of the campuses I attended it would be a bit of a commute. But on the Lehman website one of the bullets under financial benefits is "option of residential housing". What does that mean? From what you said it sounds like Lehman doesn't have any dorms, yet they give you an option for residential housing. If you could clear that up I'd appreciate it!

You're probably looking at a "proposed" student budget offered by the school's financial aid website. As far as I know, most CUNYs other than CCNY, Hunter, and Baruch, don't have housing. This student budget you see there is what they'll get for you (in the form of grants or loans) should you decide to live on your own and away from your parents (i.e., New Jersey in your case).

[Mary543]

So does that mean that they would pay for an apartment if I decided to live on my own? Or would they just offer me loans in order to afford the apartment?

I found that information at this part of the Lehman site under "Overview":
Lehman College: The William E. Macaulay Honors College at Lehman / Honors College / Lehman Honors College

So it wasn't under the financial aid website, but the never the less I think you may be right since that bullet is under the bullet "a Lehman scholarship of $3000 a year for living expenses, transportation, and other indirect college-related expenses". So maybe they are basically saying that they will cover $3,000 a year, but will over loans for the rest?

[Castro Viejo]

Originally Posted by Mary543

So does that mean that they would pay for an apartment if I decided to live on my own? Or would they just offer me loans in order to afford the apartment?

I found that information at this part of the Lehman site under "Overview":
Lehman College: The William E. Macaulay Honors College at Lehman / Honors College / Lehman Honors College

So it wasn't under the financial aid website, but the never the less I think you may be right since that bullet is under the bullet "a Lehman scholarship of $3000 a year for living expenses, transportation, and other indirect college-related expenses". So maybe they are basically saying that they will cover $3,000 a year, but will over loans for the rest?

Yes, probably. That $3,000 "scholarship" is basically seed money for you to do whatever you want with it. You can use it to buy a Wii or a Playstation if you wanted and they probably wouldn't care. They just cut you a check for $1,500 for each semester.

So the rest of your rent money will come out of pocket.