# Please help me feeling better about taking loans for grad school!! **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 29, 2006, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-feeling-better-about-taking-loans-for-grad-school/350476 "2006-03-29T23:10:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![CynicalGabe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@CynicalGabe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CynicalGabe)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2006, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-feeling-better-about-taking-loans-for-grad-school/350476/21 "2006-03-30T17:43:00Z")
I’m in my first year of grad school. No fellowships or stipends. By the time I get out, I’ll be about 60,000 in the hole. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2006, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-feeling-better-about-taking-loans-for-grad-school/350476/22 "2006-03-30T18:03:15Z")
Simply the fact that you’re thinking about the consequences of the loan puts you more in the field of “good debt” than many people. I went into Grad School because they paid me and the job market back home was extremely bleak. Apparently, US Chemists aren’t interested in graduate schools: they make up less than 10% of the graduate students (American Chemical Society data). The money was enough to live on, specially for someone like me who’s used to very narrow budgets. Some of my classmates from Grad School took loans, spent them in things that the Unloaned Ones never could afford. Some of them are professional students. Not my cuppa. Others had worse financial help than I did, took the loans to make up the rest of what they needed, _after_ figuring out how much that was. The ones I know of are doing all right AFAIK; one for example was a Mexican student, married to another: his PhD was being paid by a Mexican university (string attached: “and when you’re done, you come back and teach”), she didn’t get financing. I googled them and they have the kind of jobs that should allow them to pay her debt off just fine. It’s an investment. So, consider: - will it allow you to get into a field where right now you have zero chances of getting? Or of getting a better job? (There are there recurring mails in ACS journals, with US-BS holders complaining that “all the boss jobs go to foreigners”; they always end with some foreigner’s letter reminding them that “the boss jobs require a PhD, which are mostly held by foreigners because you guys prefer a 30K/year job to a 10K/year job; this is a perfectly logical preference but in this case happens to be shortsighted”) - for a list of common jobs held by people with that degree, are the salaries good enough to repay it without staying on a bread-with-bread diet for the rest of your life? Best wishes! ---
**Author:** ![Winston\_Smith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e95f7d/32.png) [@Winston\_Smith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Winston_Smith)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2006, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-feeling-better-about-taking-loans-for-grad-school/350476/23 "2006-03-30T18:06:26Z")
> [@DVsickgirlDV](#): > > I got accepted into UCLA to get an M.A. in Urban Planning and today I got my financial aid award letter and I’m “lucky” enough for $20,000 a year in loans. I’m kind of stressed out about getting into so much debt… so Dopers, please tell me your stories about how you took out tons of loans for grad school and how grad school (and the job you got after grad school) was well worth it. Thanks! The best thing about student loans is deferring them to take more classes. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2006, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-feeling-better-about-taking-loans-for-grad-school/350476/24 "2006-03-30T20:40:50Z")
> [@sundog66](#): > > And related to that, it was my understanding that Ph.D. programs usually offer stipends, while M.A. programs do not. Since the OP indicated an M.A. program, I assumed this was the reason for needing to take loans. Terminal Master’s degrees (a Master’s degree that someone gets with no intention of going on for a PhD) are also more common in some fields than others. In my former field of astronomy, if you meet someone with a Master’s degree and no PhD, it’s very likely that they were enrolled in a PhD program and dropped out a few years in. But in some other fields, it’s very common to get a Master’s degree with no intention of ever getting a PhD. I don’t know how much overlap there is between fields where graduate students generally get stipends and fields where people normally go into grad school expecting to get a PhD. ---
**Author:** ![Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e56c9b/32.png) [@Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harriet_the_Spry)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2006, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-feeling-better-about-taking-loans-for-grad-school/350476/25 "2006-03-30T22:47:57Z")
If I had gone $50-60k in debt to get my Masters, I’d be really ticked right now. As it is, I went part-time for 6 years and got tuition reimbursement from employers for all but a few classes. I wound up with no debt. I’m just saying, that had I had that kind of debt, it would NOT have been good. If you are going in that kind of debt, will you be able to pick up and move to where the good-paying jobs are when you’re done? If you are geographically stuck in one place, you are taking a bigger risk. And if you’ll be able to relocate then, maybe it would make more sense to shop around for a few more schools now, to see if you’re getting the best deal. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-help-me-feeling-better-about-taking-loans-for-grad-school/350476.md?page=1)