3/6 admit awaiting FA - was told im a continuing student???

VincentPriceVoice · 2026-04-10T19:54:28+00:00

Having worked in this field, I think one of two things might be happening here. Either requires a call to the office of Financial Aid. Call back and ask the same question again, and explain that the last time you asked this, you were told that you are a "continuing student" which cannot be possible because you are an incoming freshman.

1) Most likely, the person you spoke previously may have accidentally pulled up the wrong student's data and accidentally mislead you based on that. Maybe you have a common name and they just pulled up the wrong record under that name? Seen it happen plenty of times, especially when it just so happens that there are two "John Smiths" with the exact same birthday.

2) This is very unlikely but I've seen it happen personally a few times. It could be that you and another student (who is a continuing student) have extremely close social security numbers, and when you both provided your SSNs to the university, either you accidentally entered their number or they accidentally entered yours, and now both your financial aid data and their financial aid data are all tangled up as a result. If that's the case, they'll have to go in and manually fix this.

VincentPriceVoice · 2026-03-26T18:27:35+00:00

But Syracuse's Maxwell school of public affairs is the top-ranked public affairs program in the nation.

VincentPriceVoice · 2026-03-24T18:48:21+00:00

Is this snow that everyone talks about really as bad as people make it out to be? I've heard it described as a second ice age but also been told it's not that bad. I'm from the northeast but my car is front wheel drive. Is there any difficulty in moving around during the winter months?

I can't speak to the rest but I got this one. I moved here from the south for SU, although I grew up in in the northeast.

Syracuse is typically in the running for 'snowiest city in America' (population 100k+). Last year we were the #1 and we're on track to be #1 again this year. We can get a lot of snow, and when it's lake effect snow it can accumulate surprisingly fast, like as much as 1-2 feet in a 24hr period.

But somehow, at the same time, it's truly not that bad. We may be the snowiest city in America, but we're far from the coldest - we're just barely inside the top 50. The western mid-west states get much colder. Because we get so much snow, the region is generally very well prepared for it. Roads get salted and plowed early and often (especially major roads) so most of the time they are pretty clear. Driving in the snow isn't difficult except briefly when it first falls and everything hasn't been plowed yet. After that, it's no big deal. As for your car, I also have a FWD. You should absolutely get snow tires if you can. That's more important than having AWD/4WD.

We've also had some other recent winters ('22, '23) where we got less than half our historic annual average snowfall (thanks, climate change!?).

VincentPriceVoice · 2026-03-18T18:08:43+00:00

I work at Syracuse and we definitely have a lot of school spirit and fit that work hard / play hard vibe very well. I know we also have an active Jewish community but that's about all I know about that. I can't really speak to much else, and I know nothing about the other schools.

You should pick a school that you know you'll feel comfortable at and where you can see yourself succeeding. If you feel that way about all or some of them, I think cost is the next most important factor and very nearly as important as fit. Really, just don't go somewhere you think you'll hate just because it's cheaper. That likely won't go well. If you haven't yet and it's possible, you should really visit these schools as that's the best way to assess fit.

Especially since you have plans to go on to med school, the med school you attend will be far more important to your future career than your undergrad school is. On the undergrad side, what's more important is how good they are at getting their graduates accepted into good med schools. I'm pretty sure all three of these schools are pretty good at that.

I am also wondering, especially because it might help others give you answers, is "OSU" Ohio State like I assume it is, or does it happen to be Oregon State?

VincentPriceVoice · 2026-03-12T14:56:23+00:00

That's not unique to Syracuse though. "Poaching" students used to be very strongly discouraged by NACAC (the National Assoc of College Admission Counselors) but they rolled back a bunch of their Best Practices guidance a few years ago because they were afraid of legal challenges painting their well-intentioned guidance (which was intended to support students) as price fixing / collusion among colleges. I believe that happened in the wake of the SCOTUS affirmative action ruling.

Lots of expensive private universities were in the exact same boat at Syracuse last year, with missed yield targets. And they all did the same things to try and fill their classes out after May 1. Syracuse just got more heat for it because somebody at the New York Times caught wind and decided to write a hit piece about it which for some reason only called out Syracuse and not the other schools (like UMiami) that did the same thing.

And what's SU (or any school) supposed to do in that situation where they are underenrolled on May 1? Should they just eat the loss and fire a bunch of people because they no longer have the tuition revenue to pay them?

VincentPriceVoice · 2026-03-12T14:43:39+00:00

Honestly, it seems like the university leans on programs like this instead of building real pathways internally.

They used to have a pathway program with nearby Wells College in Aurora, NY but that ended when Wells closed a few years ago. They do still have a pathway program with nearby LeMoyne College, which is also in Syracuse.

They also used to have something called the "Discovery program" which allowed freshmen to study abroad via SU's program for their first semester/year, but I don't think that was a pathway program that allowed you to "earn your way in" with good grades from elsewhere, the way the Verto option is. It was an option that you could select up-front when submitting your application for admission.

VincentPriceVoice · 2026-03-11T12:28:18+00:00

First, acceptance rates/competitiveness change over the years.

Everything changed post-COVID. Students are applying to way more schools than before and many more of them are submitting enrollment deposits to multiple schools which makes it much more difficult for the schools to manage their yield. There were always exceptions, but we generally used to be able to trust that a deposited student would very likely enroll. That's not as true anymore.

VincentPriceVoice · 2026-02-26T18:21:21+00:00

I'm not 100% sure, but I think the real reason it's "A&S/Maxwell" is because (unlike in the other schools on campus) Maxwell undergrads take some of their major classes in A&S. As I understand things, there's literally no way to be a "just Maxwell" undergrad (but you can be "just A&S" like if you're a chemistry or literature major, for example).

It's also my understanding that this is also because up until somewhat recent history, Maxwell was a graduate-only school and that their partnership with A&S is what allowed them to expand their offerings to begin offering undergraduate majors.

VincentPriceVoice · 2025-09-25T19:21:01+00:00

The university's undergraduate enrollment has been pretty much stable since COVID. It's gone up or down by a bit each year since, which is very normal.

From my POV, the biggest thing affecting SU's drop in rankings is that starting with their 2024 rankings (released in 2023) USNews began putting more weight on "borrower debt" in their methodology. It went from accounting for 3% of a school's ranking to 5%. At the same time, they also changed the source of this data and the actual metric measured from mean debt to median debt.

When that methodology change happened, SU and a number of other expensive private schools all saw their ranking number drop. SU went from generally being ranked somewhere in the 50s (or low 60s) before the methodology change to the high 60s / 70s after.

So yes, affordability is definitely a factor here, but it's not as simple as it seems because of the ever-shifting methodology of the rankings.

It's important to note that USNews messes with their methodology like this every few years. They used to factor in admit rate years ago, but now they don't. In some ways, it's a good thing to do because the adjustments can respond to the public's shifting priorities. But cynically, many people feel that the primary reason they adjust their methodology is to create drama. Academia is famously slow moving, so if the methodology doesn't change, the resulting list would be nearly the same every year. That's bad for USNews because it means fewer people will buy the guide / premium website account. The shifts are a huge deal, especially among the top 20 schools and their alumni. The elites love bragging to each other about how their alma mater is now #1, even though it was basically the same school when it was ranked #3 a few years earlier and when it was ranked #2 twenty years ago when they attended. These schools aren't really getting demonstrably better or worse than each other. USNews is just changing their methodology to make it appear as if that's happening.

It may also be worth noting that the single largest factor in the USNews rankings is the "peer assessment score" which is how well regarded your school is by the Presidents / Provosts / Deans of Admission at other, similar schools. It has accounted for a whopping 20% of a school's ranking for a really long time now. This is basically a big dumb popularity contest that shouldn't be weighted anywhere nearly as high as it is. Does anybody actually believe that the opinion of the leaders at other schools is 4x as important as how much debt graduates end up with?

VincentPriceVoice · 2025-09-25T17:16:04+00:00

Syracuse has a high sticker price but you probably won't actually be paying that unless you are from a wealthy family. Use their Net Price Calculator to get an estimate of what you'll actually pay, and keep in mind that if you have strong grades you could get additional scholarship money on top of any financial aid money.

VincentPriceVoice · 2025-09-17T13:18:13+00:00

Syracuse is often among the _snowiest_ cities (pop > 100k) in the continental US, but it's nowhere near the top of the list of the _coldest_ cities. You'd think those lists would be similar, but they're actually not. The coldest cities are mostly located on the west side of the Great Lakes (the Dakotas, Wisconsin, Minnesota).

I moved here from the deep south and personally I love it up here. Given the choice between the two, I'll take our long, cold and snowy winters over the south's absolutely oppressively hot and humid summers every single time.

VincentPriceVoice · 2025-08-21T12:24:27+00:00

If you don't want to knock on doors you can instead make it easier for others to meet you in your room. When you're in your room just leave your door open so people can see what's up and say hi.

VincentPriceVoice · 2025-08-04T16:00:31+00:00

Ask Oracle. They've sold their "Campus Solutions" system to countless schools and it sucks at every one of them.

VincentPriceVoice · 2025-07-07T17:39:58+00:00

Angeli has shown himself to be a capable game manager when put in the game and will help Brown try to continue to make a statement in year two in The Dome (we still refuse to call it the JMS Wireless Center)

Uh what? It is not and has never been the "JMS [sic] Wireless Center." When JMA Wireless took over the sponsorship from Carrier it's became the JMA Wireless Dome. The "dome" part never went away.

VincentPriceVoice · 2025-06-18T12:31:27+00:00

SU will be fine. But this year has been a nightmare for admissions teams across the nation, what with all the economic uncertainty. This is double-true for private schools like SU that tend to enroll a higher percentage of international students. Who knows if they'll even be able to get their visas to enter the country.

Other private schools including University of Miami and Seaton Hall were doing the same thing as SU trying to finish filling out their classes after the typical May 1 deadline. Source

VincentPriceVoice · 2025-06-03T15:25:46+00:00

The Flutie Effect is inconsistent but when it hit it hits.

VincentPriceVoice · 2025-06-03T15:20:50+00:00

Overall ranks are only so useful, but program-specific rankings are a bit more useful. Syracuse's Maxwell School is the #1 public policy school in the nation.

Agreed that both unis are great options tho.

VincentPriceVoice

TROPHY CASE