<p>What years did you attend Harvard or what year were you graduating and deciding between Harvard and other colleges? Harvard eliminated loans from their financial aid packages for all students of all levels of income. The only way you would have debt from Harvard is you took out unnecessary loans to cover the cost of airplane tickets between East Coast and West Coast and you flew every week for the entire school year or something.</p>
<p>Chaos, I beleive you are wrong. If a student has such a high EFC (or Profile equivalent) that he/she gets NO aid, said students may still say they are not paying. At a miminum, student can get Stafford loans.</p>
<p>What post is this a response to? </p>
<p>Chaos, I beleive you are wrong. If a student has such a high EFC (or Profile equivalent) that he/she gets NO aid, said students may still say they are not paying. At a miminum, student can get Stafford loans.</p>
<p>Also donāt you mean āthanā?</p>
<p>No Chaos, I meant that. Please go back and re-read. I was responding to your comment in 141 that someone who went to Harvard, even recently, could not have debt. I think you are incorrect. In fact, a kid could have Stafford and private loans (not all of which need parent guarantees).</p>
<p>Oh I see. I understand now. 
Some parents may mismanage their money or not contribute enough to their childās education in which the student may take out loans.</p>
<p>nahā¦in the usnews magazine i have, harvard grads still have on average over $15,000 after grad(not too sure bout that number)</p>
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<p>And some parents, who make around that ceiling (say$200K)and have saved toward college NEVER imagining the bill would be approach $60K per year, may want their student to have a little skin in the game if they are full pay and the child insists on the bigger name school. It may have nothing to do with how parents manage their money. People who are making $200K today have not been making that amount for the last 20 years; they work up to that amount.</p>
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You donāt pay taxes in my state. Why should those of us who do pay for your kidās education?</p>
<p>I do think that states could give OOS surcharge rebates for students who stay in the state and pay taxes there for a certain number of years after graduation.</p>
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<p>I have roughly $50k in student loans. Around $18k is in Federal loans and the rest is in private loans. I was able to pay for all but about $1500 of my first semester of school through scholarships and out of pocket. After that, I had to take out loans for just about everything related to school. I didnāt go to a big school; I went to a small(er) regional state school. I was paying OOS, but even if I had gone to a similar school in-state, I would be around the same in debt.</p>
<p>College education is out of hand. Colleges have expanded and forgotten their main functionāeducating students. But the students get to finance these projects through tuition and fees. </p>
<p>And no, it would have made zero sense for me to go to a community college first. That actually would have made things worse. I graduated from college in 3.5 years. The program I was in requires a continuous 3 years in order to graduate. Going to a community college would have strung it out to 5.5 years. I had classmates who had done soā¦</p>
<p>^hops_scoutā¦Hopefully the debt that you took on is a manageable amount for you. If it isā¦wonderful. I never said that anyone who takes loans for college education is wrong or foolishā¦only those that take on more loans than they or their family can conceivably pay off. </p>
<p>What schools are you talking about? Very rarely is an OOS school a more affordable option than an IS school unless they offer you substantial amounts of scholarships or grants. From your post, it sounds like you barely had the ability to cover the first semester of college before you needed to dip into borrowed funds. Can you honestly say that was the most affordable option for you, or was that the option that you preferred? I donāt know your location or course of study, but there was at least one IS option you mentioned. How would that option have put you in the same amount of debt?</p>
<p>Families need to figure out the difference between needs and wants, rights and privileges, affordable options and luxuries. I see so many threads on here by kids/parents who got accepted to School X and are crushed because they canāt afford it but āreally want to goā. Well I really want a magic pony that poops gold nuggets, but that aināt gonna happen either. They and their parents shouldāve discussed the options realistically before it ever got to that point. Apply to wherever they want, but know beforehand that if the overall cost to the family exceeds $Y per year (allowing for increases) then donāt expect to go. Why is that such a foreign concept to so many people?</p>
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And Iāll say it for the tenth time. Thatās exactly why student loans were made non dischargeable. Because banks were lending hundreds of thousands of dollars to med students and others who promptly declared bankruptcy before starting to practice.</p>
<p>^Thank you. Polarscribe may or may not be correctā¦who knows, but if it were really that simple the law wouldnāt have needed to be changed.</p>
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<p>Well now that I am living at home with a full-time job, hopefully I am able to hit it hard for the next year and get a decent chunk paid down. It is a little under twice my gross pay, but it is what it is. </p>
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<p>The OOS school offered me a scholarship worth about $10k a year but I ended up only being able to keep it for a year. The IS option that I had been accepted to would have cost me about $1,000 less per semester I think in tuition/fees, but the overall cost would have come out to be about the same. So it was actually cheaper going OOS due to the original scholarship. </p>
<p>When I graduated from high school, I had all of about $700 in my savings account. I had another $1,000 in a CD. That was all I had. It got spent in that first semester.</p>
<p>hops_scoutā¦Iām glad to hear that youāve at least got a possible option to get a leg up on repaying the loans by living at home. Some folks donāt have that option, so you can the thankful for that.</p>
<p>Iām sorry you werenāt able to keep the scholarship after the first year. Did the school reduce funding or were you unable to meet the requirements for renewal? Did you consider transferring to the IS school once the scholarship went away? If Iām understanding the numbers correctly, the $10K scholarship is what made the OOS school equivalent in cost to the IS option, so could you have decreased your borrowed amount by $10K-ish per year by transferring?</p>
<p>I understand completely that not every family is able to save money to put towards a college education. We all agree that the costs of higher education have gotten completely out of control. How and when the system gets fixed will be an ongoing discussion, but in the here and now people (parents and students) need to get informed and get real about what is and what isnāt affordable, because thatās the only piece of this messed up puzzle that can be controlled by the individual family/student. The cost of higher education isnāt going to decrease any time soon, banks arenāt going to stop trying to make money, unscrupulous borrowers arenāt going to grow morals, and so on and so on.</p>
<p>I wish you the best in working your way out of your situation. It sounds like youāre doing what you can to make the best of it.</p>
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<p>Well we screwed up in the first place here. I qualified for two different scholarships and accepted the bigger money scholarship. That would have definitely been great had I been able to keep it. But with more money, means greater requirements and I couldnāt meet those requirements. Then because I had taken that one, I became ineligible for the lower one in the following years although I met the requirements for it. Had I taken the smaller one to begin with, I would have actually netted $20k in savings instead of just the $10k I ended up saving. </p>
<p>There was never any consideration to transfer to the IS school because it would have meant starting over. My degree is such that you canāt transfer from school to school and expect those credits to transfer. You have to complete the degree at one school. </p>
<p>And I agree the system needs to be fixed, but for the time-being the schools are going to continue to spiral out of control because students are taking out the money to do it. Unfortunately many students (like myself) do not see an answer other than to go to college. My profession requires a specific bachelorās degree as the minimum and is trying to move to an entry-level Masters requirement. Many professions have moved to requiring a bachelorās although it may not be necessary. That has helped colleges to get away with whatever they want. </p>
<p>I emailed the dean of one of our colleges last fall about what I considered unfair and unnecessary expenses I had to make for a specific gen-ed course. His response was that essentially they could do whatever they wanted. And unfortunately heās right and thereās nothing I could do about it. I HAD to take that class; no other option.</p>
<p>hopsā¦I certainly hope your field of work is something you love because it certainly sounds like it has its drawbacks. If this field requires a bachelors degree (now leaning towards Masters) for entry level with all classes taken at only one institution and only has a gross salary of $25K-ish per year (from your previous post this is what Iām assuming) I hope youāre passionate about it. If you donāt mind my asking, what is this field?</p>
<p>Iām an athletic trainer. Due to the nature of the courses, it is difficult to transfer athletic training-specific courses to another program. Thatās due to each program teaching their courses a little bit differently. Our national organization and many members have gotten caught up in politics and thatās what is leading the push toward the masters degree. Physical Therapy requires a masters already and is moving toward a doctorate as entry-level and we have too many member who believe we should keep up with them.</p>
<p>In my current position, I should end up making about $30k gross yearly salary. I have been working there for the last couple of years part-time and am currently working about 30 hours a week. I was originally only supposed to work until June of this year and then move on to grad school, but have recently accepted an offer to go full-time. Itās not the highest paying job, but itās a starting point. </p>
<p>It is something I love. I get to go into work everyday and enjoy it. There are plenty of drawbacks in this profession because so few understand the profession. It is normal for young professionals to take full-time internships that might pay $12k a year! But if they donāt do that, itās hard to advance in the college and professional settingā¦</p>
<p>hopsā¦Hopefully the national organization can do something about standardizing requirements for programs around the country to make things a little more manageable for future students, but if theyāre pushing the Masters degree angle to ākeep upā with the Physical Therapists Iām guessing their priorities may be a little off.</p>
<p>Good call to hold off on grad school and take the full time position. Iām sure living with your parents after college was not what you envisioned, but getting out from under that debt should be your biggest priority at this point and I think youāre on the right path. Grad school will be an option down the road, but thousands of dollars worth of debt is an anchor that can prevent you from getting a car, renting/buying a house, etc. Too many college students donāt see that far down the road, but it sounds like youāre gonna be alright.</p>
<p>As hard as this is on you, take all these lessons to heart. It may seem like the time when youāre a parent and your kids are getting ready to head off to college is way off in the future, but itāll get here quicker than you think. Save what you can when you canā¦and hopefully costs will be under control by the time your kids get there. Good Luck.</p>
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<p>What year or edition of the US News Magazine are you getting this information from?</p>
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<p>What does āskin in the gameā mean in this context? Does it mean the parents want the children to go through the experience of taking out loans? As far as I can see it, you only contribute 10% max if you make $180,000 which is $18,000. I donāt see why the jump from $180,000 to $200,000 causes a jump in contribution from $18,000 to $60,000.</p>
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<p>How about we make a compromise saying something like undergraduate student loan debt can be dischargable but medical school student loan debt canāt unless said medical school student drops out or something?</p>
<p>Also I understand that Polar Scribe is for loans being dischargable for private loans and 3bm103 and Wolverine86 is against private loans being dischargable, but what is everyoneās opinions on Government loans like Federal Direct Loan, Stafford Loan, and Federal Perkins Loan?</p>
<p>ChaospaladināOnly a few colleges give much money to anyone making over $180K a year. A couple years ago, I know that Harvard and a couple of the other Ivies did, but the ceiling for the 10 percent figure was $180K. </p>
<p>So for people who make a certain amount, the EFC is equivalent or more than the most expensive colleges cost. Even though a family might be able to make the big price tag school happen for their kid, they might want the kid to contribute in some way as well. Many who have the higher incomes have saved through the years as well, but it may be needed for retirement. Lots of different scenarios out thereā¦</p>