New York City for 1 week. Where to stay?

Airbnb, though you probably wnt hit your price range still

/thread

That will be pretty tough. Airbnb is probably your best bet. At ~$100 you are looking at some 2 star hotels, you can find them on expedia/hotels.com/etc but they are not pretty. Can't say I'd recommend any of them, sorry.

sleep in central park (kind of serious)

Just come up for the weekend. At $100/night for the week, you better be sitting on Park Ave begging for donations during the daytime in order to get enough money to afford a semi-livable place.

What are you planning on doing during this week? Do you not know anyone to stay with in NYC?

Otherwise you are in for a tough ride unless you find a good sharing situation.

No way you'll get NYU for a week.

There are pretty nice places if you can up your price $100-150/night. I've stayed at the Hyatt 48 Lex a few times in Midtown and their website rate happened to be slightly higher than the advertised $250/night rate on Expedia. They said they'd match the rate and beat it by 25%. Not really sure if you're going to get anything for $100/ night though. Best of luck.

Try booking.com. I believe if you just need a place to crash at night, you'll definitely find a good 1-star/2-star hotel or a hostel down in little italy/chinatown in your price range.

Hostel? I've never been in one in the US but did the whole hostel thing in Europe during college.

And you aren't technically looking for downtown. I think the conference is at Hotel PA across from Penn Station at 33rd & 7th. Not being nit picky but if you're searching expedia or kayak I think they break out search option for manhattan's different submarkets. I'd search midtown.