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Hi all,

Has anyone tried speaking to NYU's financial aid office about lowering the calculated annual student contribution? They want me to pay $6k+ a year, which probably isn't a huge deal, but a) I don't/won't have that kind of money and wonder why they think I will, and b) there's a good chance I'll be on their LRAP program, and having a bigger student contribution limits the amount of debt that is LRAP eligible.

Just curious if anyone has any experience in this, or maybe can shed some light on how they calculate student contributions.

dixiecupdrinking wrote:Hi all,

Has anyone tried speaking to NYU's financial aid office about lowering the calculated annual student contribution? They want me to pay $6k+ a year, which probably isn't a huge deal, but a) I don't/won't have that kind of money and wonder why they think I will, and b) there's a good chance I'll be on their LRAP program, and having a bigger student contribution limits the amount of debt that is LRAP eligible.

Just curious if anyone has any experience in this, or maybe can shed some light on how they calculate student contributions.

I would be curious about this too. I have yet to find out my financial aid award (probably $0) and expected student contribution, but I asked them to take into account certain extra expenses that I anticipate and I hope they will.

You can borrow to cover that amount.

If, for some reason, the documents you turned in to NYU finaid do not reflect you true financial position, you can usually file for an appeal. You would have to prove some big change though.

swc65 wrote:You can borrow to cover that amount.

If, for some reason, the documents you turned in to NYU finaid do not reflect you true financial position, you can usually file for an appeal. You would have to prove some big change though.

I know you can borrow to cover that amount. The problem is, that debt would not be covered by LRAP, because you were presumed able to pay it out of pocket at the beginning.

dixiecupdrinking wrote:Hi all,

Has anyone tried speaking to NYU's financial aid office about lowering the calculated annual student contribution? They want me to pay $6k+ a year, which probably isn't a huge deal, but a) I don't/won't have that kind of money and wonder why they think I will, and b) there's a good chance I'll be on their LRAP program, and having a bigger student contribution limits the amount of debt that is LRAP eligible.

Just curious if anyone has any experience in this, or maybe can shed some light on how they calculate student contributions.

I successfully negotiated my student contribution, although I think it was due to a realization of a mistake on their part rather than my negotiating skills. They wanted me to pay a fairly large sum of money each year, but this number was a total of all my husband's and my assets. I thought it was nuts that my husband had to spend all his money on NYU when he'll have his own grad school expenses. So I called them and told them all this, and I'm pretty sure they didn't initially realize I was married, despite saying that on the app. So I sent them some more info and they adjusted my student contribution to pretty much exclude my husband's part of our savings. Definitely give it a try!

I'm really worried about this question. I have a 401(k) from work, and during the ASW, they said they assume you cash out your retirement account and put it toward tuition. Which is not a good financial decision -- you pay a penalty, plus income tax, and lose the accrued benefit that, over time, will be more valuable than the interest you pay on 10-year loans.

It won't matter for private practice -- as someone else said, you can just borrow your assumed student contribution. But for me, it seriously erodes the benefit I'd get from NYU's LRAP. Kinda sucks.

scribelaw wrote:I'm really worried about this question. I have a 401(k) from work, and during the ASW, they said they assume you cash out your retirement account and put it toward tuition. Which is not a good financial decision -- you pay a penalty, plus income tax, and lose the accrued benefit that, over time, will be more valuable than the interest you pay on 10-year loans.

It won't matter for private practice -- as someone else said, you can just borrow your assumed student contribution. But for me, it seriously erodes the benefit I'd get from NYU's LRAP. Kinda sucks.

It does appear to be the single largest drawback to the way NYU implements their LRAP. Especially in comparison to Columbia's. My issue also stems from retirement account funds. For me, it's still worth it, because I've only been in the workforce for two and a half years and will only be cashing out ~$10k in retirement money, which isn't such a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it does feel a little wrong that they demand it.

NYU's LRAP program pales in comparison to other top schools, including Columbia Law School. I am now dealing with NYU's calculation of my student contributions which is FAR above anything I could possibly afford, and the Financial Aid Office appears to be inflexible and entirely unsympathetic. Although I have not yet given up with my "negotiations" it appears that I may not be able to go into the type of public interest career I initially wanted to go into because such a career will not pay back my loans.

The fact that NYU "expects" us to liquidate our retirement savings is ludicrous and antithetical to the supposed values underlying the LRAP program. It discourages a category of potential public interest students and lawyers from applying to the program - which tend to be people with life and work experiences that contribute in great ways to public interest work. It totally ignores that these people, who tend to be older, will not be able to make up the years of retirement savings that other LRAP participants who have no such savings will be able to obtain after exiting law school. I also (thankfully) only had a few years of retirement savings, so I am barely affected by this policy, but I am pretty horrified by it and by what it says about NYU's public interest law programs.

Isn't NYU notorious for being stingy with loans/aid?