If you are interested in coming to NYC, check out CUNY, which is only $170/credit and offers all sorts of options. CUNY is a system of about 20 colleges in all five boroughs of New York City. There are even a few of their community colleges that offer film or video focused programs, but the senior colleges that most people look to for film programs are City College, Hunter College, and Brooklyn Collge (although there are other schools in the system that offer film studies, these are the most popular). Hunter and City also have Masters programs. There is also the CUNY Baccalaureate program which allows you to customize your degree and pick and choose classes at any of the CUNY campuses while working with an advisor.
CUNY schools often have faculty from NYU and Columbia teaching there, and offer internships and study abroad programs. For instance, Brooklyn College has a program where you can go to India for a few weeks to make documentaries about social issues. Even in the community colleges, the internships lead to good opportunities.
CUNY is an excellent system, although their reputation wasn't so good in the past and there will always be naysayers. City College started limiting the film program to a select group of 25 students each year, and has improved their program. Brooklyn College is always the school that everyone thinks of for film, but it's in an area that isn't convenient to everyone. The community colleges in CUNY have really good programs and tend to focus more on getting hands-on experience, whereas their senior colleges tend to start students out with theory. And it has been acknowledged by many in the city that BMCC (the only CUNY Comm. Coll. in Manhattan) has better equipment than Columbia or NYU because they got several grants from the NSF. No other private schools are giving first-year students hi-def equipment to work with -- but BMCC is. And NYU is mostly hype now anyway, everyone says it's lost its oomph and declined in quality as a school in many departments, but especially film. As for NYFA, most of their instructors also teach in CUNY schools (two of mine do), but I haven't heard anything about the school itself. You could check out SVA but they are also expensive. Columbia is about $1200/credit - crazy!
Though the tuition is affordable, the biggest challenge for anyone coming to NYC will be cost of living, especially now because NYC and NYS depended a great deal on the tax revenue from all those superhigh Wall Street salaries that have dried up. So there are many budget cuts happening, and it will keep getting more expensive to live here. If you get a decent roommate situation or a dorm, though, you can make it.
Plus NYC is a great place to shoot.
http://www.cuny.edu
