I am wondering how much is too much for college loans. I know this varies widely depending on what field you are going into and your plans after school but I’d like to get a rough estimate.
I’m trying to decide between three Universities. Two are public schools in California and it looks like I will have to take out 30k in order to get my BA/BS. The other an Ivy League in New York and it looks like I will have to take out up to 120k.
I am applying to as many scholarships as I can, but I’d rather prepare for paying most of it myself than expect to get a bunch of it covered. My intended major is Physical Anthropology which isn’t exactly known for being profitable. Furthermore, I’d like to be a Professor so it is unlikely that I will be making a lot of money any time soon. I’d like to go to Graduate school and I am wondering if the Ivy League school might help me get better positions in the graduate schools I plan on applying too.
How much did you take out in loans for your total college experience?
For college, zero. For law school, in the neighborhood of about $100,000. If I’d taken loans out for college, I don’t think I could have repaid them. But the law school loans were pretty easy to repay after a few years. But I also recognize that my experience is atypical.
My advice: cheaper is better. If your UC choices include either UCLA or Cal, you can’t go wrong.
Generally, the more selective the school, the greater the returns to your education. The question becomes, how much better is the Ivy League school compared to the state school? If they place all their grads in great schools, and that doesn’t happen at the Cal school, it might be worth it.
Dale & Krueger conducted a study of twins in Minnesota and found that the financial returns to the twins who attended the more selective school were greater compared to those who went to less selective schools. Think about smaller classes, more individualized attention, and the ability to conduct research. But that also depends on the faculty. If the best people in the field are at the state school, you might want to go there - if they actually teach classes and work with students.
Another potential advantage might depend on where you ultimately want to work and teach. If you want to teach at a selective institution, you are probably better of earning a degree elsewhere. Really top schools don’t typically hire their own grads. You go elsewhere, become famous, and then go back. This doesn’t really affect you, because you could go to the state school for undergrad, Ivy League for grad, and get a job at the state school. But don’t go to the state school for undergrad and grad if you want to work there after graduation.
One last thing - you’re young. You might change majors. Are there strong programs in other areas you’re interested in? (I would imagine so.)
If we’re talking about a “public Ivy,” you might get a comparable education, especially if you enroll in an honors program. In my field (education), I can tell you on admissions committees a Berkeley grad with a great GPA and good GRE scores is on the same level as a Cornell grad. The school, if it’s a well-known competitive state institution will not hurt you.
There’s also the phenomenon of peer effects. In short, the smarter your classmates are, the greater the benefit to you. You’ll have stronger students in courses that will challenge you academically. If you’re one of the smarter kids at either school, guess what? Less bang for your buck regarding peer effects.
Last thing you want to consider is the strength of the alumni network. In my home state, being an alum of my undergraduate school is incredibly helpful. Not so much here in Massachusetts. Also, where will you likely be happiest? Paying less for an education where you don’t do as well because you don’t like the city, or large classes, compared to paying more for a school in a community you love and will excel in is not a good decision.
To answer your question: none for undergrad, probably about $20K for masters and some of the doctorate. Selective state flagship and honors program for undergrad, Ivy League for masters and doctorate.
None, luckily. When I did my first degree in the 1980s the universities didn’t charge any tuition fees. For my current degree (in law) my employer is paying all of my expenses.
I am borrowing nothing for UCLA*, although my husband took out about 5k for his BA from there, and his law school is costing uh, a lot. Grad/professional school can get expensive. I figure it’ll cost about 250k for us to both become lawyers, but we’re anticipating a certain level of comfort and employability, so a school loan the size of a mortgage doesn’t seem so bad from that perspective. I’d balk at six figures for a BA, but then I’m [del]a cheapskate[/del] rather frugal.
120k is awfully steep for undergrad, or even for grad, so you’d really have to do a lot of cost/benefit analysis and soul searching. There is the whole “adventure” aspect that doesn’t really fall under that. I know if I were still single, finishing my BA in NY would be mighty tempting regardless of the price tag, just for the experience of it.
*Are you doing TAP? If you have that under your belt, I’d be willing to bet you get at least a few scholarships, especially at UCLA. If you are doing TAP and considering UCLA, PM me and I can probably point you to a few good resources.
I currently have ~$45,000 with one lender (that’s for four years of undergrad and currently one year of grad school,) ~$13,000 with another lender (just for undergrad,) and I have paid off one small loan of approx. $1000 already.
So that’s approx. $60,000 so far, and I have at least one semester of grad school left, so it will probably shoot up above $70,000. Of course, if my application for in-state status is approved (and it’s retroactive to when I enrolled, like it should be) then the loans I took out for grad school will fall to less than half their amount, but I’ll still be in the ~$50,000 range.
I’m 2/3 through my junior year and my current total is
none freshman year
$1000 from sophomore year
$6000 for this year
just took out another $4500 for summer abroad. hope to not need all of it if I can scrape enough cash to cover my plane tickets and such
may need another $4500 next year
ETA: I attend a UC, but my financial aid covers my fees. My loans pay my rent and utilities, my job buys my groceries. Good times.
My Masters will cost more, much more. Depending if I stay in the province or not anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000 (Cdn) a year. Not looking forward to those prospects. The sad part is even after taking a year off and saving for graduate school, my saving won’t last more than one term. By September I’ll be able to afford tuition and room and board for one term, then I’ll be broke. A sad state of affairs.
Well, lots of people get into very good graduate schools who didn’t do their undergrad at an Ivy. Just go online and look at the CVs of assistant professors at schools in your area, you can get a sense of where people come from.
I have zero loans for undergrad, $20K for my masters. The masters was expensive for my field ($40K total), but since I didn’t have loans from undergrad (thanks to my parents) I could spend more later. I would just pretend the $20K loan was for my BS and then it didn’t seem expensive.
My dad paid half of my undergrad (and encouraged us kids to save like mad), and grad school was paid for.
This is the real advantage of getting into a research heavy field, like engineering or the physical sciences. A research fellowship tends to pay, at the very least, your tuition and fees. Typically they will shell out a livable (for a single student at least) stipend.
Being in this field also helps with summer employment, I was able to get relavent work at a national laboratory where the pay was far higher than students in other fields.
I went to community college, so none there. The last 2.5 years I went to a university and took out three loans equalling $11,000. I graduated in 2000 and have pretty much just left it at whatever Sally Mae says I need to pay every month. I’ll have to check how much I have left because it’s got to be less than $1,000 by now.
Zero loans. Worked offshore and/or UPS during college. I just paid as I went.
Disclaimer: It took me almost ten years to finish my undergrad.
Was it worth it? Yes. I was able to start my post-college career with a hefty savings account and zero debt. I could have sped up my journey thru college, but some years the money was just too good to pass up.
No loans (my parents paid, though I paid for my own board most of the way), and my daughter hasn’t needed them (we paid; scholarships and employer benefits took care of tuition; our savings took care of room and board), either.
Too many. I didn’t qualify for many scholarships, I did get a few grants, and while I did whiddle my bills down to a respectable level, I pulled out the maximum every semester to help with living costs.
I think I have about 30k right now, and I have one more year, so I am probably looking at another 10-15k. Two of my 4.5 years was at a community college so that helped with costs (I didn’t pull unsubbed loans then)
Absolutely none. If I didn’t have the money for tuition that semester, I didn’t go. No scholarships, no grants. But I got through college and grad school debt free.
I was a good, hard-working nerd in high school, and very wisely pursued a good but not insane school–I could have gotten into Ivy League, but I would have had to pay through the nose. Instead, I went to Penn State, joined their Honors program, and got a full scholarship, plus a scholarship for books.
The specific advice from my experience: Take the PSATs, register to send the results to some schools of this type (large, not expensive, with LOADS of cash to give out for scholarships), and hope you’re brainy enough to become a National Merit Scholar. It’s a dorky, under-recognized distinction, but some sweet money can attach to it if you play your cards right.
I’m a community college transfer. I should’ve done the TAP program, but I didn’t realize I could finish up and apply until shortly before the application was due. The UC schools I applied are Davis and San Diego, Berkeley didn’t have my major. Davis didn’t offer me any finaid other than small Pell Grants. I have a 4.0 GPA, I completed the honors program, I have extracurricular activities and I volunteer in addition to working full time while entirely paying for my education myself yet they didn’t give me anything extra. I listed my income as ~15k yet they want me to pay 15k (and maybe even more) per year for school.
I’m hoping the other schools offer me more but after what Davis offered, I’m trying to prepare for the worst. Davis does accept undergrads into their graduate programs, so I was thinking of going there and trying to get started on my graduate stuff early.
hawksgirl, how is the rental situation at Davis? They suggested 9k/year for rent/utilities. Is that do-able there?
The Columbia school says that 70% of their program participants go on to Graduate School. The other ones end up with high prospects. I have a friend studying Economics there who expects to leave 70-80k in debt for his undergraduate yet he says it was the best thing he ever did. I like economics a lot (I TA for it) but bio anth is my favorite field so far. I like the non-impacted majors at Columbia too which means I would take a wide variety of core classes. One of my professors told me I would be perfect for the smaller private schools but most of them don’t offer my major. When I told a couple of them about the low aid from Davis they were shocked. One of them has been helping me find all sorts of scholarships the last few days.
My situation was a bit atypical. I was a single parent, singlehandedly (no child support) supporting three kids while putting myself through school and working part time. I used a good part of the school loans for living expenses–you know, like buying groceries, keeping the phone turned on, shoes for the kids, etc. Probably not a wise useage of school loan money, but it was that or I wouldn’t have been able to keep our heads above water and attend school.
Do I regret it? Going to school and getting my degree, no. Having so much in loans, probably, but I don’t know that I had much of a choice, especially since we were barely getting buy at it was (living in public housing, using medical assistance, etc.).
