Shrinking Violet: Dream School
Apparently enrolling at NYU is living the dream -- though around campus, alluding to NYU's "dream school" status is generally done in a mocking tone. But what's the difference between when I went to NYU (then barely in the top 50 on U.S. News' rankings) and now?
Read on for Rent, Rudy and Residence Hall madness...Felicity, Friends and Sex and the City: More women go into secondary education in America than men, and NYU has benefitted from the boost in profile from feel-good shows that had serious female followings during the formative years of the current crop of high school graduates. J.J. Abrams plucked the Noxema Girl from commercial auditions to give a glossy, Hollywood sheen to urban university life. Chandler Bing's crew showed that you can live in New York City for nearly a decade and never have to associate with someone darker than half and half. And Sarah Jessica Parker, who used to get heckled from dorm windows when she'd walk her dog down West 10th, made New York the sexiest thing on earth to the kind of person who reads Page Six.
What cultural touchpoints did I have? The sexual frustration of Woody Allen and Jerry Seinfeld, the AIDS-plagued of Angels in America and Rent, and Mrs. Sarah Jessica Parker's flirtation with Marlon "Mafia" Brando's indulgent self-parody in The Freshman. In other words, I just went because Columbia wouldn't accept me and Vassar's Poughkeepsie made Alphabet City look gentrified. Good times.
Rudy Fucking Giuliani: God I hate that guy. And so did any young punk in New York when he was busy cracking down on graffiti, pot smoking and artistic pursuits. Now, every big city mayor in America takes his thinly-veiled racist rhetoric and "quality of life" police state policies as political dogma, especially including Mike Bloomberg who basically ran on the "more years of Rudy, but without the sleeping around on a cancer-stricken wife or cross dressing" platform.
Basically, NYU went out of its way to alleviate parental fears for safety when I took the tour, and I'm sure do still. But they also provided cover for the NYPD to stage raids of Washington Square Park and helped the city get cameras installed. I'm sure Curbed could figure out how to do a time-lapse map of NYU's downtown Manhattan purchases (now extending to downtown Brooklyn with the takeover of Brooklyn Polytechnic), but the NYU-ization of downtown was certainly done with the help of the mayor's office.
But just to show that nervous nelly parents still aren't convinced, NYU didn't make the top ten dream schools in their estimation. Though I still think it's less concern that little Jane or Jimmy will get mugged, and more concerned that they'll come back with a wicked coke habit or, worse, a homosexual! At least they should rest easy that none of them will come home a political radical (they all go to CUNY, Cooper and the New School) -- unless "objectivist libertarian" counts as politically radical these days.
Private College Loans: The question the Princeton Review asked, officially, was "What dream college would you most like to attend (or see your child attend) if acceptance or cost weren't issues?" Which, thanks to the growth of the private educational loan industryscammers millionaires, they no longer are -- at least for a while. NYU also just happens to be one of the most expensive schools in the country, having gotten even more relatively expensive than when I went there. Yet undergrad applications have tripled in the same decade.
But NYU is the ultimate striver school. And you have to spend money, or go into enough debt to buy a first home most anywhere else, to associate with the smaller and smaller number of people who make money. And oh, how NYU chisels students with further costs for lab fees, books, incredibly expensive residence halls and even unspent dining hall chits! It was NYU, after all, that did everything in its power to get the Bush Administration to overturn the Brown decision on graduate unions -- which, in the ultimate striver sentiment, probably helped to earn them brownie points with the Ivies who had been fighting such efforts to pay students living wages for teacher assistant work for years.
Needless to say, I'll be applying to state schools when apply to grad school in a desperate effort to defer paying back the $25,000 I had to borrow for one last semester as a Violet.
Read on for Rent, Rudy and Residence Hall madness...Felicity, Friends and Sex and the City: More women go into secondary education in America than men, and NYU has benefitted from the boost in profile from feel-good shows that had serious female followings during the formative years of the current crop of high school graduates. J.J. Abrams plucked the Noxema Girl from commercial auditions to give a glossy, Hollywood sheen to urban university life. Chandler Bing's crew showed that you can live in New York City for nearly a decade and never have to associate with someone darker than half and half. And Sarah Jessica Parker, who used to get heckled from dorm windows when she'd walk her dog down West 10th, made New York the sexiest thing on earth to the kind of person who reads Page Six.
What cultural touchpoints did I have? The sexual frustration of Woody Allen and Jerry Seinfeld, the AIDS-plagued of Angels in America and Rent, and Mrs. Sarah Jessica Parker's flirtation with Marlon "Mafia" Brando's indulgent self-parody in The Freshman. In other words, I just went because Columbia wouldn't accept me and Vassar's Poughkeepsie made Alphabet City look gentrified. Good times.
Rudy Fucking Giuliani: God I hate that guy. And so did any young punk in New York when he was busy cracking down on graffiti, pot smoking and artistic pursuits. Now, every big city mayor in America takes his thinly-veiled racist rhetoric and "quality of life" police state policies as political dogma, especially including Mike Bloomberg who basically ran on the "more years of Rudy, but without the sleeping around on a cancer-stricken wife or cross dressing" platform.
Basically, NYU went out of its way to alleviate parental fears for safety when I took the tour, and I'm sure do still. But they also provided cover for the NYPD to stage raids of Washington Square Park and helped the city get cameras installed. I'm sure Curbed could figure out how to do a time-lapse map of NYU's downtown Manhattan purchases (now extending to downtown Brooklyn with the takeover of Brooklyn Polytechnic), but the NYU-ization of downtown was certainly done with the help of the mayor's office.
But just to show that nervous nelly parents still aren't convinced, NYU didn't make the top ten dream schools in their estimation. Though I still think it's less concern that little Jane or Jimmy will get mugged, and more concerned that they'll come back with a wicked coke habit or, worse, a homosexual! At least they should rest easy that none of them will come home a political radical (they all go to CUNY, Cooper and the New School) -- unless "objectivist libertarian" counts as politically radical these days.
Private College Loans: The question the Princeton Review asked, officially, was "What dream college would you most like to attend (or see your child attend) if acceptance or cost weren't issues?" Which, thanks to the growth of the private educational loan industry
But NYU is the ultimate striver school. And you have to spend money, or go into enough debt to buy a first home most anywhere else, to associate with the smaller and smaller number of people who make money. And oh, how NYU chisels students with further costs for lab fees, books, incredibly expensive residence halls and even unspent dining hall chits! It was NYU, after all, that did everything in its power to get the Bush Administration to overturn the Brown decision on graduate unions -- which, in the ultimate striver sentiment, probably helped to earn them brownie points with the Ivies who had been fighting such efforts to pay students living wages for teacher assistant work for years.
Needless to say, I'll be applying to state schools when apply to grad school in a desperate effort to defer paying back the $25,000 I had to borrow for one last semester as a Violet.
