Your posts to this thread are just about that stupid.
Your FACE is just about that stupid.
I should clarify that what I meant was that as a graduating senior, my daughter is not eligible for scholarships reserved for people such as you, older women returning to school.
I’m not an older woman returning to school. I entered college immediately out of high school. I’m 25.
Wow.
I got into DePaul U with an AA. It wasn’t Yale, but who needs Yale? (Not that I applied to Yale.)
Anyway, I ‘spawned’, so I went elsewhere re: costs, but ‘top five schools’ are overrated.
U of Colorado is a ‘top state’ school. UW-Madison is good…obviously Virginia, William & Mary, CUNY, and UC-Berkeley are up there, but if you go to a good liberal arts college, apply yourself and not be a jerkoff, your graduate school options widen quite a bit.
LOL @ your face is stupid. You got totally pwned, mhendo.
surrounded by literalists, (if you’re still reading), yes, I think $40k of debt is an acceptable risk IF your daughter plans to work as a biomedical engineer once she has her degree. According to this website, the average starting salary for biomedical engineer with a Bachelors Degree is approximately $53,470.
The numbers I have seen vary, but typically, you don’t want your student debt to exceed 150% of your anticipated starting salary. I took on loans that totaled approximately 75% of my first years’ salary. I have a ten year repayment plan and am nearly finished paying them off. While I definitely notice the money leaving my bank account, the payments have never been a hardship for me.
Huge caveat: I have had the good fortune of being continuously employed since graduating. That loans/salary ratio obviously doesn’t apply if you don’t have good job prospects.
I have a close friend in the biomedical engineering field, and in her estimation, current and future job prospects in the field are stable and salaries are comfortable. If your daughter is willing to work in industry, particularly in sales, it can be a downright lucrative career. (This is the opinion of a friend of a stranger on the internet so further research on your daughter’s part is probably warranted. :))
This is a key part, but even prior to that: how sure is your daughter that she wont want to change her major once she has to take a few major classes? I can’t tell you how many of my friends were hardcore science majors who ended up graduating with degrees in exciting and marketable things like philosophy and English.
This is very, very true and is something her daughter should consider. (Thanks!) It is also a strong argument for two years of community college followed by a transfer to a university with a good biomedical engineering department.
Did she try all the wacky scholarships listed at fastweb?
But, judging from your posts, you sound completely miserable. So your claim isn’t particularly persuasive.
And the reason for that? Too many people who can’t plan ahead and expect the state to pick up the tab for their kids, house, education, whatever. On one hand you are upset because you can’t get free money to send your child to college and on the other hand you are upset because the state is running out of money to fund those colleges. Do you see the irony?
It’s also possible that the daughter won’t even want to stay in college - there is a big difference between the work load in college and in high school. Particularly what she wants to do - my husband is a biomedical engineer (without the degree) so you are talking serious math and science classes here. She may meet someone, marry and drop out to have children. So many things can happen at that stage of life.
I just can’t see how it is a better idea financially to send an 18 year old kid off to college in a different state, thereby paying extra tuition as well as room and board, instead of “taking a chance” on a local CA college. Even if it turns out she can’t get all of her classes on time, it cannot possibly cost as much to take 5-6 years to get a degree at home as it would to do it in four out of state.
Right, you can judge the state of my life from a few posts I’ve made in a single thread. In case you weren’t paying attention, I’ve had a rough week. Right now I’m eating pancakes and watching Alton Brown, and I’m perfectly happy. When the school releases the funds from my student loan I’ll be reimbursed for the textbooks I have to buy and back to my normal state of living. Would this degree be worth it if I’d spent seven years in a state of complete misery to achieve it? Considering the job market here, probably not.
I’m sure there is more involved than the brief summary here, but if you could only afford to apply to six schools, then is there a reason why were you applying to private ones in first place?
Did you find out about the classes being cut for the inexpensive ones before you applied? Could you have found out and applied to others instead of the ones you did?
It’s because of decreased state tax revenues due to unemployment and the bad economy.
With the financial aid packages private schools can put together, friends of ours found it the same price to send their kid to an out-of-state private school as the local state university. Plus the OP’s daughter won’t have to worry that her program is going to be cut.
Yeah, I would think that for a plan to be realistic, having two private schools (which I’m assuming are brand name, top-tier) at the top of the list is just cruising for a bruising. I probably would have gone for one well-known private and one well-known local public. Then all the selections after that would have been ones that were affordable and quality. I wouldn’t have had any on the list that I perceived to be crappy or “bad investments”. What would be the point in applying to such a place?
I also agree that the daughter is likely to change her career idea, if not her major, which would mean selecting a school based strictly on the biomedical engineering program might not be the best course. I attended an engineering school and after the first year, it was amazing how many students who were majoring in electrical or mechanical engineering suddenly wanted to be industrial engineers (the one perceived to be the easiest) or become management majors (pretty much dominated by student athletes). Because an engineering school can only offer so many courses of study, there were very few ways for students who had come to the realization that they did not like science at all to still stay with the school. I’m sure lots of scholarships, as well as self-esteems, were lost just because they didn’t have choices and felt stuck where they were. Those first two years can suck you dry if you lack the passion and just aren’t good in engineering classes.
You know what else sucks you dry? Your FACE.
Exactly!
This is very helpful. Its hard to accept such a large debt without knowing what the chances are of paying it off afterward. A new graduate will be paying off loans, plus be able to pull in enough to get an apartment (first, last, security deposit), possibly a car and insurance, deposits for various utilities, and still cover day to day expenses on what she makes just out of the gate; which will probably be not much for a few years. We repay our loans. Not re-paying is not an option. We have always been careful to make sure we can repay before we borrow. Our home is the only debt we have had that has taken longer than 2 years to pay off. Which is part of the problem. The mess with calculating the credit scores has made it difficult to get lending for such a large amount of money.
My daughter and I have had this discussion. As a talented artist, she wanted to go into computer generated graphic art. I told her she could do anything she wanted to do and I would support her, but if she couldn’t support herself, she would be up the proverbial creek. After a few weeks of research, she decided to make graphic art her first personal metamorphisis. (Doing one thing all your life leads to spiritual, emotional, and intellectual stagnation; therefore at some point, one must re-invent themselves and their way of life, several times before ‘the end’).
We will be checking this one. Wacky seems to work for us far more than traditional. Truth is always stranger than fiction.
I implore you to actually read what I have posted in the past. Forgive me for asking, but why are you so bitter? What makes you so opposed to accessible higher education? It saddens me that you cannot see the difference between investment and entitlement. Please read "A Conservative Argument For Higher Education". From this article, conservatives, such as yourself, seem interested in funding higher education programs.
I also ask you to do the math. Where is the savings of 6 years at what you call a cheaper school (if what is left of the UC-CSU system stays intact in that time) and 3 years at an out of state school? Lets not forget that the cost of living in the area she plans to be in is 25% lower than here in Ca.
The expensive private schools both offered her full tuition and living expenses scholarships. Unfortunately, she was waitlisted for both.