How One Student’s Mission to Save $350,000 and Earn a Free Ride to NYU Paid Off
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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How did Sierra Bile describe her motivation to attend NYU despite a $350,000 sticker price?
Here's your money briefing for Wednesday, February 12th. I'm Mariana Aspuru for The Wall Street Journal. Ciara Bile wanted a college degree from her dream school without the $350,000 price tag.
My parents hadn't gone to college. They were not financially savvy. I grew up poor. And so my confidence that I could pay for NYU had nothing to do with the resources around me. It was driven by this desire to go to my dream school, even if that meant I had to stay up until the 1159 deadline and turn in that scholarship that I just found out about two days ago.
Her journey to go to school without taking on student loans tells a bigger story of the growing gap between college sticker prices and what attendees actually pay. We'll hear from Wall Street Journal personal finance reporter Oyin Adedoyin about how students and families are finding ways to cut the cost of college education and how Sierra did it. That's after the break.
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What initial financial picture did Sierra face after her NYU acceptance?
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To get her college degree without paying hundreds of thousands of dollars, Sierra Bile found luck in outside scholarships, financial aid, and old-fashioned negotiation. Wall Street Journal reporter Oyen Adedoyen recently wrote a piece about this, and she joins me. Oyen, what were Sierra's options when she first started looking for ways to pay for school?
Listen, NYU is one of the most expensive colleges to attend in the country. And Sierra knew this, but it was also her dream school. And so she basically, you know, she had applied early decision for this school. So she had gotten her acceptance in February. And it was almost like she was blinded by just the excitement of being accepted by this institution that she had always wanted to go to. And so she just immediately accepted. And then when she checked her financial aid portal, she saw that she was getting accepted. no aid. And NYU estimates that that year it costs about $76,000 or so to attend the university. And that includes tuition, includes room and board, and other fees associated with being a college student.
She was hoping to get as many awards as possible.
How did Sierra organize and track over 300 scholarship opportunities?
She started reading a bunch of books on scholarships and how to pay for college. She started watching YouTube videos from scholars who had won a And she started Googling and she created this huge spreadsheet that now has over 300 scholarships. Here's Sierra describing her process.
The different columns were like name, like name of the scholarship, website, like amount, something like that I would show like the requirement. So I would write like two recommendation letters, 3.0 GPA, like resume, like all these things. And then I would have like another column that would be due date, important dates for like semi-finalist, finalist stage. And then I would also categorize it like yellow was like, okay, I applied. Don't worry about it, Sierra. Because, you know, after a while you'd lose count. You'd be like... Did I apply to this? Blue was like, I really want to apply to this soon. Like top priority of next steps of next scholarships I need to apply to. Green was, I got it. Yay. Red was, wow, that's so sad.
I did not get that.
WSJ reporter Oyin Adedoyin is back with me. Oyin, Ciara chipped away at the cost of attending NYU with those scholarships. Where did she find them?
She found them just on the Internet. A lot of them were local. She said that she found that local scholarships, though maybe not. The award amounts were lower. They were a little bit less competitive than the big national scholarships.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:18
2
How did Sierra Bile describe her motivation to attend NYU despite a $350,000 sticker price?
0:18–1:51
3
What initial financial picture did Sierra face after her NYU acceptance?
1:51–3:19
4
How did Sierra organize and track over 300 scholarship opportunities?
3:19–4:56
5
Where did Sierra find scholarship opportunities and which ones did she target?
4:56–7:35
6
How did competition and social media affect scholarship accessibility and competitiveness?
7:35–9:33
Speakers
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