Room and board, you know that thing that secretly makes college so expensive? It tries to slide under the radar, disguising itself as an asterisk next to a fairly reasonable tuition fee. It isn’t until you scroll down to the end of the “About” page on the college’s website that you realize that simply living on campus is going to cost a small fortune. And no, you can’t quite cover the costs with your minimum-wage summer babysitting gig.
But do you want to know cruelest part of it all? Some of these tens of thousand-dollar rooms don’t even include a bathroom.
Manhattan College, as of 2015, charges students $14,430 to live and eat within our 0.1845 square-mile campus (yes our campus really is that tiny).
Here is what you can, and probably should, spend your room and board money on:
1. 5,772 slices of pizza at Broadway Joe’s. Or if you are more a stuffed chicken fan, 2,623 slices – including sauce (because let’s face it, does anyone ever say no to sauce?) This means you could literally eat a slice of pizza for each meal every day for 5 years.
2. 150 YEARS of Netflix. Who knows, with modern medicine we can be Netflix and Chillin’ with our fourth husband at age 169. Plus, you won’t have to worry about collecting money from those four leeches who know your password information.
3. A chipotle burrito (with guacamole, obviously) delivered to your dorm room everyday for two and a half years. Take that, Lockes.
4. A Taylor Craft BC-12 private airplane. You’ll never be late for those 8 a.m.’s in Leo again. Although, parking may be tricky.
5. Season Tickets to the Mets. Treat your significant other, best friend, or that kid who sits behind you in physics to tickets for the best seats at Citi-Field. I’m sure they probably won’t pay you back someday.
6. A Personal Assistant. Ditch the Lily Pulitzer planner and get your own personal assistant to work for you for $13 per hour. They can work from nine-to-five Monday through Friday for the entire academic year. I mean, they always say college students need to be more organized right?
7. Backpack through Europe for 5 months at a maximum spending limit of $100 a day. You would be the definition of cultured, plus all those years of being forced to learn a foreign language will really pay off.