App State vs. Western Carolina

College Search & Selection
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I am a registered nurse. The least expensive way to get your RN is to go to a community college and get the ASN degree, pass NCLEX to get your RN license, then do a bridge program to get your BSN. There are many online BSN bridge programs. Nursing is not like investment banking, where the pedigree of your undergraduate degree may be very important. As long as you go to an accredited school, there is no reason to go into big debt for a nursing degree. Nursing salaries aren’t great to begin with, much less if you are paying on big student loans.

Visit All Nurses dot com. It’s a forum for nurses and nursing students, where you can get all kinds of terrific advice. I will warn you, however, that experienced nurses who absolutely know what they are talking about will tell you it would be crazy to go $125K into debt for a nursing degree that can be obtained for a fraction of that cost.

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Say you get a 50k job- and that may be high in some places. Your monthly payment on 125k is about $1266 for the ten year plan. The total, with interest, is about $152k. Your monthly take home income will be about 3100. What you’ll have left for “me” is 1800. Sounds like a dream, eh? Now add in costs for housing, transpo, clothes, food, utilities, your cell phone and web, maybe car payment and insurance, maybe a co-pay on your health insurance. Maybe union dues.

Hmm, rent? if you’re lucky, $500 for shared, another 100 for shared electric and web, you can get cell for under $50 (more if you’e paying off the buy-cost of the phone, at the same time.) Around here, leasing a car is the least expensive option. My kid pays $350 for lease and insurance, at least $100 for gas. The other kid is paying closer to 500 for her car and insurance. One pays zip for health, but the other has to kick in $180/month. All that adds to 1300-1450. Leaves you between 350 and 500 for lifestyle, clothes, an occasional dinner out with friends, a movie. You can pack your lunch. Oh, yeah, I forgot groceries.

Or maybe you think you’ll live at home for ten years and ride the bus. Or marry a rich banker or doctor who doesn’t have his/her own loans, wants to pay yours.

Go for the least expensive option.

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Are there any schools you can commute to from home? It looks like in state tuition is ~$3500 for community colleges and ~$10k for 4-year colleges.

If you attend community college for your sophomore year you could pay for that with summer work earnings. If there’s a 4-year campus within commuting distance you could cover the tuition with the federal student loan and summer work earnings. The more you can work, the less you’ll have to borrow. Even if you borrow the whole $7500 for both your junior and senior year your total debt will be ~$42k, not the ~$108 you’re on track to reach now. That’s a much better scenario for you. You want to be happy with your entire future, not just the next 3 years.

My son had a similar choice. Attend an OOS school and graduate with debt ($27k for him and a similar amount for us) or commute to a local state school and graduate with no debt. He chose the latter. My niece also chose to commute to college and has been able to use the money she earned on traveling.

What do you want your future (after college) to look like? The loan payment for a $108k loan is $1283; for a $40k loan it’s [url=<a href=“http://www.finaid.org/calculators/scripts/loanpayments.cgi%5D$483%5B/url”>http://www.finaid.org/calculators/scripts/loanpayments.cgi]$483[/url]. What you could do with an extra $800/month for 10 years? You’ll pay $16k interest on a $40k loan; on a $108k loan, you’ll pay [url=<a href=“http://www.finaid.org/calculators/scripts/loanpayments.cgi%5D$41k%5B/url”>http://www.finaid.org/calculators/scripts/loanpayments.cgi]$41k[/url]. There’s an awful lot you could do with an extra $41,000.

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@allthingsunknown

if you need another year of prerequisites, then both AppSt and WCU will require that year plus two years in their nursing program.

even though you are finishing year 2 at KSU, in effect you will enter either ASU or WCU as a sophomore, needing three years to complete your BSN. so basically, you have $27K in loans with 3 years to go.

either school will cost $27K-$30K per year, before grants and scholarships, but not considering travel and personal expenses.

so now we are up to at least $110K in debt for your BSN, but probably closer to $125K.

IMO the last two posters have the best advice, in particular:

“I am a registered nurse. The least expensive way to get your RN is to go to a community college and get the ASN degree, pass NCLEX to get your RN license, then do a bridge program to get your BSN.”

You seem to be saying your only choices are go into six-figure debt or not go to college. No one has suggested this. In fact my daughter is doing exactly what @Nrdsb4 suggested. she is in a program (RIBN) where she does 3 years community college and gets her RN, then 4th year at ECU for her BSN.

She is in year 1 and it was fully covered (books too) by Pell Grant, NC Grants, and a $750 scholarship. We anticipate her earning her BSN in 4 years with zero debt. And we like your parents are not wealthy, far from it. But that is our plan for paying for her college.

Would she be “happier” on campus at a university? I don’t know. She doesn’t seem unhappy, she does things with her friends on weekends, she studies all week and is getting top grades, her apprehension about succeeding in college is fading away and her confidence is soaring, she has a big bedroom all to herself without a crazy roommate, and she is not writing to College Confidential saying how depressed and sad she is at college like a lot of posts that I come across here. Actually she seems much happier about our decision since two or three of her friends bailed on UNC-W within a year to come back to PittCC and ECU. But I do know this – she will be able to graduate with her BSN in 4 years and start her nursing career with zero debt hanging over her head. It can be done and in our case it will be done.

My advice is to not set yourself back financially for many years just for 3 years of being happy at AppSt or WCU, when there is no way of guaranteeing that either place will give you the happiness you seek. I would suggest speaking with your parents and exploring the possibility of earning the ADN / RN at you local community college. then you could do the RN-to-BSN program for a year at either school, or even get the BSN online from ECU.

but if you are set on your plan, keep in mind that AppSt will require an extra summer semester before the first Fall semester of Nursing classes, and WCU does not appear to require this.

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I agree with @blprof and @Nrdsb4. One can’t swing a cat most places without hitting a CC, college or university that offers an ASN. Start out there and build on it. It doesn’t matter if a nurse graduates from Penn or Podunk County CTC - she or he still has to pass the same board test to become an RN. As for student debt, S1 has $25,000. He managed to move out with roommates but operates on a razor-thin margin and it’s hard for him.