<p>You can get loans without a cosigner but you risk having fairly high interest rates to cover the lack of credit history – if you can find a way to build credit sooner rather than later, then all the better, but it’s still hard to do timewise at your age.</p>
<p>I read in another thread that you’re capped to $1000 summers – that is going to hurt <em>severely</em>. I was in a very similar situation with respect to your parents and financial aid, and I had to work over 100 hours per week during the summers in order to generate the kind of money that I needed, in addition to the full work-study allotments during the year on top of SAT tutoring and research positions. The saving grace is that if you can put together a schedule and a detailed financial plan with your crunched numbers, you can go to the Finaid office and pester them for a deal. Even a few thousand chopped off will help tremendously.</p>
<p>If you need to cover food and clothing and books, you will need to factor this in too. Purchase ALL your books online – NEVER from the Bookstore. You’ll waste a ton of money. I also recommend learning to cook (as opposed to dining out all the time, which is a huge temptation when you’re living on a campus surrounded by places to eat).</p>
<p>If you really, truly want to make Penn happen, it’s doable. But I can warn you right now that it may not be worth it. You’ve got a full ride to another school, and I can assure you that working all the time during your undergrad years with the constant worry of money will cause you a ton of stress. It was the source of a lot of emotional turmoil for me. This is all independent of the fact that you have SCHOOL to deal with! It’s going to be doubly painful for you if work gets in the way of your studies and you find that you’re paying a huge price tag for a diluted GPA that will, in turn, hurt your ability to find decent work later. This is what happened to me to a certain extent, although I managed to land a good job after some pretty incessant searching, and so things are <em>finally</em> starting to look up after 4-5 years of turbulence.</p>
<p>Of course, that’s a very long time. And it’s during a very once-in-a-lifetime type of opportunity – your undergrad years are very unique. I sometimes wish I could go back and do things differently, and so I really hope that my experiences at least help someone else make the right choice for themselves. You’ll want to be able to focus on having a healthy balance of work, study, and socializing. I learned a lot at Wharton, but honestly, I would have done well anywhere else, too, and I know you could do the same.</p>
<p>If I were in your shoes, I’d honestly choose a different school with a more manageable payment plan. You’ll still have great job opportunities if you do well academically and network yourself effectively. My time at Penn certainly had many amazing memories I’ll always look back upon fondly, but it was also full of extremely dark moments and stress – feelings of frustrated isolation as a result of the lack of support base. </p>
<p>I apologize if this response is a bit emotionally-charged, but I am simply telling you that the type of decision you are considering here will very likely come with a similar territory. It’s not easy coming up with that kind of money, and taking on too many loans will simply bury you in debt later. If you want Penn and it’s your dream school, then you can make it happen, but if you’re only after prestige, then absolutely do not go there. Prestige will only carry you so far, especially if your GPA takes hits from all the work you’ll have to do to make ends meet.</p>
<p>I often wonder how my college experience would have been had I chosen a school where I had either a full ride or decent aid package. Peace of mind is worth quite a bit.</p>