I am a Video Art and Technology Major at BMCC. In the spring of 2020, I will be graduating from college with my associates degree. I have interests in arts and humanities, science and acting. I know the exact subjects I need in order for me to graduate. However, I was disappointed by the fact that the college limited the amount of classes you could take per a semester. At BMCC we are not allowed to go over 15 credits for each semester and it troubled me that I was having problems with advisement.

My advisor changes every semester and I can not see the same advisor twice for some reason. I believe if we have the same advisor throughout our college year or at least throughout the semester students wouldn’t encounter any doubts about their major, or struggle with picking the right class. Also by adjusting the limit to a higher number of credits would help students graduate faster and save more money. I have a part time job where I use my earnings to cover my MTA card and food. While my guardian takes care of my tuition. I believe a fully funded CUNY would give students better equipment to use for their assigned work and better teachers that will make sure students benefit from each class they attend.

I am a Business Management Major at BMCC. I believe that I will be graduating on time once I have enough money to pay my tuition. The Financial Aid office and the ASAP program both determined that I’m not qualified to receive aid or enter their program. So, I work part time to provide for myself.

Before attending BMCC, I attended the Holyoke Community College in Massachusetts. Back then it wasn’t a struggle to receive aid. Aid to pay your tuition was fully funded through fafsa and it seemed like they helped provide many opportunities that helped students avoid student debt. I have never been in debt before, not until coming to New York that is. It’s honestly a struggle to be a New York student that wants a certificate in what they are passionate about. I believe that there would be a more stress-free campus that wouldn’t deter students or people looking to become graduates with a fully funded CUNY.

I am a Political Science Major at BMCC. I aspire to be a future business owner and be involved with politics.  With the help of financial aid I will be graduating in spring, 2020. I try my best to utilize the programs and services that BMCC offers such as the counselling office and the finance and banking club. I strive to graduate on time with great grades and a solid understanding in the subjects that I took, so I can apply it to the world that I live in.

However, sometimes the workload can be too overwhelming for me. I keep on going so I can achieve my goals. I have a job that helps me pay for other expenses outside of my college tuition. Food, clothes and my metro card are some of the things my wages from my job covers. With a fully funded CUNY I believe my campus would have more classes, more access to free textbooks used in class, free transportation to get to classes, and less students in debt.

I am a Business Management Major at BMCC. I am expected to graduate in the fall of 2020, once I pass all of my classes. It was fortunate for me to be accepted into the ASAP program at BMCC. The program covers my tuition and transportation fees. Without the ASAP program I wouldn’t be able to take winter or summer courses. Without these courses I would not be able to graduate on time. After I obtain my degrees I would like to open a vet and animal daycare in New York. I have a part time job that helps me pay for my rent and other bills outside of school. One of my main academic goals is to graduate with a high grade point average. To achieve this goal I’m pushing myself to be a better student. To give myself time to study so I could achieve my academic goals.

This is my second year of college, but my first year at SUNY Cortland. I transferred here from Hudson Valley Community College. I’m a Political Science major with a minor in Communications, and I’m somewhere between a sophomore and a junior because of the credits I transferred in with from HVCC and high school.

I am concerned about graduating on time. If I had six more credits I’d be considered a junior right now. I didn’t want to do classes over the summer because I didn’t want to have to pay for that out of pocket on top of everything else. Once I do graduate from Cortland I’m going to grad school, preferably at U Albany or Syracuse. I pay for school with financial aid, TAP, and the Pell Grant. I also work at Target and Market 32 on breaks to pay for textbooks and food for the semester. If I didn’t get financial aid, I would probably be working full time at Target, and I don’t think it’d be possible to go to school at the same time as that.

When I first started high school, I knew the scholarship I needed to receive. If I didn’t get it, there was a chance I wouldn’t be going to college. After four years of dedicating my life to studying, taking AP classes (with tests I could barely afford to take), and eliminating any chance of a social life which could distract me from my schoolwork, I am proud to say I received the private scholarship I dreamed of. So I did all that and burned myself completely before even going to college. While I was extremely grateful for the scholarship that would help me with tuition, I had no idea that financial burden was inescapable in college.

I am currently a sophomore at Hunter College. I came to Hunter as a pre-med student, but being so burned out freshman year, I saw my A+s that I got in high school transform into Cs. My scholarship was threatened and I was devastated. At the beginning of sophomore year, I decided to try anthropology courses and I fell in love. However, I had to get a part-time job to pay for my monthly metro cards and textbooks. Working almost every night after class drained every bit of energy I had and I could barely stay awake while studying. I struggle to maintain the 3.5 GPA that my scholarship requires me to maintain. Textbooks, especially online textbook codes have destroyed my bank account. Food and transportation remain major struggles. Why do students have to pay over one hundred dollars each month just to be able to get to their classes or to attend their jobs so they can have money to pay for all the costs of being a student?

I dream of getting a PhD in Anthropology and becoming an archaeologist. However, field schools for archaeology are extremely expensive and fieldwork is usually done abroad. I have no way of paying to travel to obtain these experiences and I fear being in major debt. I am honestly afraid of graduate school, as I know that the extreme financial burden that awaits.

I’m a psychology major and part of the Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP)– it is critical for me to be able to attend BCC. Before I enrolled in ASAP, I worked full-time and was a full-time student as well. It was difficult to manage everything: I am a mom – I have two young boys (5 and 6), working full-time, plus taking 5 classes, helping out with the rest of my family.

I’m loving the free MetroCard. Last semester, I actually lost my card and they weren’t able to replace it. ASAP told me there wasn’t enough funding to replace lost cards! I don’t make use of the campus child care center. Back when child care was a bigger issue for me, I didn’t pursue my education. If I had known about it, I would have enrolled at BCC much earlier.

I do have a fear of not graduating on time. If I lose my financial aid, or I’m no longer able to be enrolled in ASAP for whatever reason, I won’t be able to afford to continue. But ultimately, I want to go to City College after graduating from BCC, to pursue studying law in the future.

I’m a Professional Writing major with a minor in Anthropology, and this is my fifth year here at SUNY Cortland. I’m planning to go to grad school after this to study Anthropology and Political Science. Right now, I take out private loans. I think I got the Pell Grant for about a semester, and it was only like $50. I don’t receive TAP, and I couldn’t even qualify for the Excelsior Scholarship.

I’m a student director in one of the campus buildings, and I also pick up shifts at Auxiliary Services as a floater. So I’ll wash dishes or cook chicken on the grill for six hours straight. In general, I work anywhere between 12 to 25 hours a week. I’m always looking for more work because I don’t get any money for rent or food, and that takes away from study time and homework.

I applied for food stamps, but I wasn’t eligible because I didn’t work enough to qualify. They don’t take into consideration that I’m also a full-time student. I’m already a year late to graduate, but I’ll be on track to graduate this year. If it wasn’t for working so much, I’m sure I would’ve graduated on time for my degree. We need a fully-funded SUNY so people like me can graduate on time and not have to worry about going to grad school because of all the private loans they’ve already taken out. I’m walking away from undergraduate degree with almost $100,000 worth of student debt. And that’s from a state school. I’ve already started paying those loans off for three years already. That’s another thing I pay for with work, besides car insurance, my car payment, internet, electricity, rent, food, and textbooks.

I don’t pay more than $300 a semester in books. If a semester cost me more than 300 bucks in textbooks, I would weigh which books are more valuable and get rid of the other ones. There are also some classes that require fees in order to take them. I took art for three semesters, and that was $200 for each course each time, totaling $600. And that doesn’t even cover materials. It covered studio space and workshop equipment.

My biggest challenge as a SUNY student has been finances. I worry more about my finances than I do about passing each class. I know I’m at a major disadvantage in class because I have to work so much more just to make sure that I have a roof over my head while I’m in school, or just to make sure the internet doesn’t cut off so that we can finish our homework. I think if we had a much lower tuition or if there were less hurtles to have to jump through for a student like me, then I might be able to not be in as much debt, and then I would be able to go to grad school without the fear of not just getting rejected, but also of it not being paid for.

I’m a sophomore at SUNY Cortland. I study psychology, and I’m working toward a minor in Spanish. After I graduate, I’m going to grad school for my Master’s and PHD in psychology, probably somewhere in New York City– by home. I currently get financial aid, TAP, and the Pell Grant, but even with that I still take out loans, and my parents pay a little bit to help too.

I don’t work during the school year, but at home I work at the YMCA, and between the money I get from that and babysitting, I can pay for my textbooks. If I didn’t get financial aid I’d probably be in a CUNY school instead of at SUNY Cortland, so that I was closer to home and it’d be less expensive. I wanted to go to SUNY because I wanted to get out of the city for awhile. There are so many problems that SUNY and CUNY students have to face right now, but just one of them is transportation to and from school and home. That’s expensive, and I feel like that should be provided. We need a fully funded SUNY and CUNY so that everybody has the opportunity to get a degree no matter what financial circumstances they’re in.

I’m a Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) major at SUNY Cortland, but before that I was an Adolescent Education major. I’m kind of a “super duper senior” because I graduated more than 2 years ago with a B.A. in English, which makes me a non-traditional student.

I have two plans that I could go for after graduating. I could get my master’s here at Cortland and then go to New York City to teach, or the second plan is basically going abroad and teaching. I pay for college with loans and work. I used to receive TAP and the Pell Grant when I was initially going to college, but I don’t receive them anymore.

I work part-time at Walmart, roughly 20 hours a week. Last year I worked full-time and could barely balance my workload between classes and work. This year it’s a lot easier to balance the workload. I get my textbooks through the inter-library loan, which is awesome because you don’t have to pay a million dollars for books. I use whatever money I have leftover from work for food, even though right now I don’t have a lot of money for that, either. I was going to apply for SNAP, but I heard that college kids aren’t always eligible.

Even if I didn’t receive financial aid for college I would still go, considering that’s what I’ve been doing for the past couple of years, but I am concerned about graduating on time. Some of the classes I need to take actually conflict with other classes I need, which means I have to push my graduation date out a year, essentially. I think SUNY/CUNY should be free because I think that students shouldn’t have to worry about scraping together money for college when they should be trying to perform better in classes.