NYU Makes The Decision for Students

After parents spend $50,000 a year for their kid to attend NYU, the school will pick a roommate.

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20130205/greenwich-village/nyu-wont-let-incoming-freshmen-pick-their-own-roommates-anymore?utm_content=dougdouglass@msn.com&utm_source=VerticalResponse&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=NYU Won't Let Incoming Freshmen%2



• I work for NYU. Trust me, nothing is more important to these assholes as rich kids and their parents' money. They don't give a shit about anyone who apples here other than how deep the pockets are of the one paying the bills. How else would they be able to have the largest system of university sites in the world?

• $50,000 a year? That sounds cheap for NYU.

• Since when is this unusual? My college specified my roommate my freshman year.

• It's horrible the way the government holds a gun to these people's heads and makes them attend NYU...Oh wait a minute...

• lol, what the hell? isn't this how every school has done this? since forever?

• Walking in the rain, from the train depot The only thing now that's gonna keep me warm is my overcoat

• [quote]$50,000 a year? That sounds cheap for NYU. I thought the same thing, which is scary. But, maybe 50k is just tuition, or tuition and fees. I've seen a lot of college/university costs listed as $60-65k, which includes tuition, room and board, fees, books and supplies, and estimated living expenses.

• If you live a monkish existence, $60,000 per year with room and board might be possible.

• This is so not new.

• The basic tuition (with processing fees and everything added) is $44,200 a year. That doesn't count room and board.

• What R5 said. This is news? To whom?

• It does my heart good to know an ex-friend is paying at least $200,000 to send the first of 3 kids to NYU. (They have to be paying board, since they moved out of NY years ago). And the degree is in journalism (snicker).

• I roomed at NYU with someone I knew - thank goodness. All my friends who had the school choose their roommate ended up with psycho/druggie/drug dealing wack jobs. Good luck with that incoming freshmen!

• Good lord. $44,200 for tuition alone? What are they spending all that money on? I am willing to bet it isn't faculty. For that amount of money you could go to a CUNY, rent a nice studio apartment, and have money left over.

• r13 that's a big problem with NYU. It attracts a lot of damaged head cases who come to NY to "party" and college is an easy option for them to live in the city while student loans or parents pay their living expenses. I went to NYU in the late 90s and good god, there were so many emotionally whacked druggies attending there and living in the dorms. Almost all of them didn't make it to graduation and dropped out after a couple of semesters. Like you, I was lucky to room with a guy I already knew, but a lot of the kids in our dorm were just completely fucked up. I know at least two have since died of drug overdoses, and one suicide.

• I'm confused what point the OP is trying to make. As many people have pointed out already, colleges ALWAYS choose your roommate freshman year. Op, could you clarify what point you were trying to make? Do you really think tutition and room and board entitles freshmen to make their roommate decisions? if so, how would they make these decisions?

• I think OP is saying, unlike the UK, the US is not a class society because everyone can afford $50,000 tuition.

• [quote] What are they spending all that money on Real estate. Seriously. NYU has bought up and continues to buy swathes of manhattan.

• NYU Is The Cancer of Greenwich Village.

• Meh. My boarding school picked my freshman roommate. My college picked my freshman roommate. It didn't come up in grad school. So how is this a problem or unfair in any way? The OP seems to link it to the amount of tuition being paid. If tuition were lower, would it then be acceptable for a school to choose a roommate? Are the parents who are paying the tuition supposed to choose a roommate for their little darlings? Are the kids supposed to choose? What about kids who don't know anyone at their new school? I don't understand what the OP wants here.

• I think it's important for college kids to room with people they don't know or might never talk to outside of the collegiate environment. It exposes sheltered kids to different people from different walks of life and teaches them to deal with varieties outside of their own experiences.

• [quote]an ex-friend is paying at least $200,000 to send the first of 3 kids to NYU My gosh. I certainly hope she gets that money back WITH INTEREST, either in this life or the next.

  Shirl

• First off NYU is a total racket. Why anyone would pay that outrageous amount of money for a degree that isn't ANY better than any CUNY/SUNY degree is beyond me. Columbia I could understand but NYU??? Second, is "geographic diversity" the only thing NYU strives for in this? It doesn't make any sense. I thought most private schools have some sort of survey to match people up, why doesn't NYU?

• [quote] lol, what the hell? isn't this how every school has done this? since forever? Yep. Pretty much.

• [quote]First off NYU is a total racket. Why anyone would pay that outrageous amount of money for a degree that isn't ANY better than any CUNY/SUNY degree is beyond me. Columbia I could understand but NYU??? Beyond educational quality, doesn't NYU have any sort of brand value? I'm asking seriously. I thought NYU, to some degree, was a "name" school that would be good on a resume, and also good for networking. Not Harvard or Yale level, but valuable nonetheless. No?

• R25, If you're a person who wants to work in film or tv in a position that takes actual technical and artistic skill, AND already has connections, but is expected to go to college first, you had better go to USC or NYU. But all of those factors must be present. Yes, in certain fields (provided you are already accomplishing things on your own), NYU is great for networking. Is it worth the price tag? One could argue that those who benefit from it had a good chance of ending up wealthy anyway. The name looks fine on a resume, but is better for networking. At one point, certain schools of NYU offered training that few or no other places did. But no one's hiring anymore, so it doesn't matter.

• R15, are you for real? I attended NYU in the late 90's too. Lived in Rubin, Brittany then Carlyle Court. NYU picked my roommates freshman year - then I transferred dorms mid year and met 3 of the most awesome roomies ever, and roomed with them all till graduation. I don't know where you were hanging out but I didn't run into many druggies, unless you count your occasionally pot heads in Brittany Hall, or a few of the film kids that were fellow classmates - most kids were pretty normal, if not totally rich (but that's another topic). Everyone I know graduated. I'm sure when you factor in room & board, NYU is pushing 60K a year now. Jesus, it was 45K a year when I attended years ago.

• A lot of colleges let you pick a roommate if you know of one. At my alma mater one of the main goals of pre-freshman orientation, never openly stated but everyone knew it, was to grab the first sane person you could find and mutually co-assign to be roommates. Safer bets and all that. I grabbed onto some easygoing nice borderline-nerdy Jewish kid from NJ, figured he would be easier to live with than some of the bad luck you can get from the roulette wheel of random assignment. I was right.

• What a scam.

• Well, that's college for you.

• I would have picked the hottie on the football team if I'd had my druthers. Instead I got some kid from Turkey who called his parents every Sunday morning at 8 AM yelling in whatever his native language is. The football player was the ONE guy from our school who made it to the NFL for a while. I was 18 and looked maybe 14... the football hottie was 18 and he looked like a HOT 28 year old.

• NOT news. I'm still friends with some of the roommates I had.

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