I am a junior at SUNY Purchase studying Literature. I hope to go to law school afterwards. My family feels pretty unstable financially, and college is both a hope and a hurdle. I moved back to New York from Texas in 2021 and I am having trouble with my residency and it is affecting my financial aid; I feel the system is too difficult to navigate by myself. Although my parents support me by helping me commute to my university and paying for my education after aid, it is becoming difficult. I have a part-time job on campus but I am looking for another job on campus. SUNY Purchase is a fantastic university and while it was one of my top schools, one of the major reasons it ranked so high was because I could commute there. With the financial aid packages, on-campus housing was simply not an option for me. I wish there were more virtual options for classes since I have to commute from pretty far and more options for classes, since few classes for my degree are actually offered in a semester. A lot of the offered classes also overlap in their timing, so I can only pick one among many classes I would have liked to take and would help fulfill my degree requirements. I have come to love many things about college here. 

I am currently a Junior at Purchase College. I am a communications major with a minor in Psychology. I decided to major in communications because Purchase is a Performing Arts college so there wasn’t much for me, especially not much that I was interested in here. 

I personally don’t pay for college, Foster Youth pays for my education and I am grateful for that. TAP is very helpful, however I feel like they can help out students more. My older brother was the first one in my family to go to college, however he didn’t get the chance to finish because he had to help pay bills. I will be graduating with my Bachelors in 2024. I luckily haven’t had any big challenges with paying for college because of Foster Youth. The financial aid awards I’ve gotten pays my tuition and food but not my daily living and other expenses such as money for textbooks. Textbooks are very expensive and sometimes I can’t afford them. Some professors also aren’t understanding of that and it can be frustrating. I live on campus however since I graduated high school in 2020, and that was the peak of COVID therefore we were the first ones affected by COVID first hand. I came to live on campus the second semester of my Sophomore year, like others in my class of 2024. I used to work Freshmen and sophomore year to cover expenses because I was living at home however once I got to campus I stopped to focus on school more and make it my priority. The only issues I’ve run into while registering for classes is not having many options and therefore having to settle for certain courses.

I personally feel like we need more of a variety because I’m not an art student here at SUNY Purchase College and this is a performing arts school. Advising for classes and navigating my way through college has been easy because I’m an EOP student therefore I get a-lot of help from my counselor every semester. I am very thankful for that and I have come to realize that students don’t have the support system in college and they all deserve to have that. College is not easy, especially when you have no support system.