Columbia and debt

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
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<p>Hi all, I've been a long time lurker in the Columbia forum on CC, and I'd like to thank you all--the things I've learned here have really given me a better handle on what the whole Columbia experience is about.</p>

<p>I'm a CC admit for the class of 2013. I'm excited about the school, but worried about debt; I'm not eligible for FA, and after taking away what my parents are paying I can expect to be around $50,000 in debt (to my parents) after I graduate.</p>

<p>So, current or prospective students-- how much personal debt are you taking on (or will be taking on) as a result of your Columbia education? How much is a Columbia education "worth?" I ask because my other top choice at this point (Grinnell--yes, I know, two more different institutions you could not find) is giving me a $17,000 renewing merit scholarship, and as a result I would be debt free after graduation. </p>

<p>For Columbia alumni-- how has the debt you accumulated during your time at school impacted your post-collegiate life?</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

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<p>please clarify - your parents are giving you a no-interest loan with no expectation of when you pay it back? or are there restrictions? </p>

<p>i think that 50k with interest is a bit much unless you know exactly what you want to do. is it a variable rate, etc, also matters. if it is 50k without interest, then well we are talking something that is manageable from a debt perspective. </p>

<p>Grinnell is a fine school, but as mentioned a very different experience than columbia.</p>

<p>i am of the opinion that columbia is the finest academic option out there (because of its total experience) and i would lodge its worth as being very high, but ultimately it should not be something that negatively impacts your relationship with your family, or forces you to do things you do not want to do. i should offer that i have a few friends that have heavy debt loads, but you don’t know that until you inquire further. they don’t love the fact they have debt, but it did propel them to get their butt in gear and get good jobs.</p>

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<p>This evaluation of debt is something you need to figure out. 50k is a lot and Columbia opens more doors to you than does grinell. If you want to work on wall street post graduation then the 50k is worth it and you’ll make up that difference in ~5 years. If you want to go to law school you might end up saddling yourself with more debt. if you want to work at a non-profit then it’s more difficult to recover the money. I agree with ad geek, 50k interest free isn’t nearly as bad as it with interest.</p>

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<p>As a parent of a soon to be member of the class of 2013, this is an important question. We are only able to contribute $20k per year and with no financial aid available, our student will have to incur $30k per year of debt if he elects to go to Columbia rather than the other options [like Grinnell or a state college] which is offering full rides. Is $120k of student debt for undergraduate feasible give the strong likelihood of law school to follow?</p>

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<p>this isn’t usually what people refer to when they say “debt” 
it surprises me that your parents don’t just pay for your education since they can clearly afford it (and honestly a family contribution of 50k over four years is not that much). if you are the one who refused their money and insisted you pay them back then you’re foolish (sorry). however if your parents are giving you a real “loan” with interest then that is really messed up.</p>

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<p>i graduated undergrad with 0 debt - my parents paid for it + i got some financial aid </p>

<p>i think the “worth” of a columbia education really depends on what you plan on doing with it. if you are going to major in english then you’re probably better off not going into debt
if you’re going to SEAS or you plan on majoring in something that gives you marketable skills then the debt might be a good idea.</p>

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<p>The answer to such questions can only be approximated by assessing the financial alternatives. Nobody can really quantify how much more money he’ll make as a result of going to Columbia, but we can assuredly say it’ll be more, and he’ll go to a better law school, all else being equal, and probably get a job he’s happier with. Going to Columbia will also boost his ability to achieve success in life, through classmate and alumni connections, intellectual preparation, and job/law school placement. If he wants to become a teacher or an accountant, then choice of school may not matter much, and the reasons to pick Columbia are qualitative rather than financial. If he wants to go into a highly-compensated field, or become a professor or something, Columbia will make a measurable difference in salary and it’s appropriate to speak about a “payback period”.</p>

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<ol>
<li>I also find it “interesting” that your parents don’t simply pay for your education outright, as it seems they have the money to do so.</li>
</ol>

<p>My advice would be to go to the school that will not leave you saddled with debt. The truth is this
</p>

<ol>
<li> It is the INDIVIDUAL–not the school–that determines your overall success. Columbia has graduated hundreds of thousands–if not millions–of students over the years. However, very few have made tremendous marks on the world. At the same time, many from non-Ivies have done just that. It’s really about your drive, initiative, personality, etc.</li>
</ol>

<p>An Ivy degree is great but it’s not worth the stress of debt. You won’t have the freedom to choose the life you want for yourself after graduation. Instead, you’ll find yourself making decisions based on finances. Not good! Networking and connections will take place no matter what college you go to. </p>

<p>I simply do not feel a school’s name is worth going into debt over. If you can afford it, great. If not, I’d take the free ride and stress free life for 100, Alex.</p>

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<p>That’s kind of harsh on the parental front.</p>

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<p>im a 2013 columbia admit. i shouldn’t have any debt when i graduate.</p>

<p>and i’m also not a believer of the “marketable major” theory. study what you want. that’s the major tradeoff between an ivy and a state school (in my opinion). at an ivy you have more academic freedom and your overall critical thinking ability along with the university name should get you stated on your career path regardless of what you major in.</p>

<p>with state schools it seems almost imperative to major in business or engineering because those majors are the only thing that will give your diploma any heft.</p>

<p>also columbia is in new york
 so even if you major in something “unmarketable” the wallstreet internships should help.</p>

<p>anyway i’m off track. like i said i got a ton of financial aid i only have to pay about $3000 ($5000 if i want university insurance) so i can’t help you. i say go with your heart. if you’re not crazy about columbia to begin with why go into debt for it? if you love it go ahead and go. i have always believed that happiness is more important than money.</p>

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<p>^ you’re in for a rude awakening bananasandwich! </p>

<p>i didn’t know a single english major who had a wall street internship
its funny how you think they basically hand them out to whoever is willing to take one. plus y would they pass up the engineer or economics major for an english major</p>

<p>there are plenty of ivy league grads who had a fluffy major who are really struggling right now</p>

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<p>Indeed, Shraf. </p>

<p>I personally ran the recruiting efforts on behalf of my consulting firm back in 2006, and had to filter 250 Columbia resumes for 52 interview slots. Guess who got the invites? The ones whose resumes showed a lot of analytical aptitude, business acumen, and entrepreneurial spirit. Sure, there was the odd History major with a 4.0, a Bain internship, and President of 2 clubs who made the cut, but I read (okay, skimmed) a lot of cover letters from liberal arts majors who had no real clue how to best present themselves or their accomplishments.</p>

<p>That’s if you want a whiz-bang strategy consulting job, of course
 On the other hand, the point of view BananaSandwich holds may prove quite true if:</p>

<ul>
<li>You dial your expectations down to the kind of firms that the proverbial ‘state school’ career fairs would entertain.</li>
<li>You seek out companies which aren’t recruiting at Columbia (because many companies don’t, on the expectation of low yield - so you have to sell them on the idea that you really WOULD join them if they make you an offer)</li>
<li>You sell yourself on the basis of your intelligence and work ethic, which a decent (3.4+) GPA at Columbia speaks greatly to</li>
<li>You research every company you apply to and your cover letter reflects an argument for why you are specifically interested in joining their industry and their firm in particular</li>
</ul>

<p>As an average-to-above-average liberal arts major at Columbia, it’s not THAT hard to get a job in, say, Government, Media, Retail, Travel, Law (paralegal), Human Resources (at a large multinational), or, certainly, Teaching. But you’re likely not going to be on the fast track to upper management, and you’re probably going to start at a $30-35k salary. Is that so bad? Well, not really
 it beats the heck out of the people at ‘state schools’ getting a degree in French Literature. A promising career on Wall Street is probably a bit of a stretch for the ‘average’ Columbia liberal arts major though.</p>

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<p>shraf i’m not misguided. i’m perfectly aware of the competitiveness of those kinds of internships and almost everything else worth having in life.</p>

<p>that said, i stand by my words. if you know what you want, use what you’ve got and are willing to struggle it doesn’t matter what you major in. </p>

<p>and Denzera you said you turned away many “average” liberal arts majors at columbia because they “had no real clue how to best present themselves or their accomplishments.” Ok, so liberal arts professors don’t teach their kids how to fill out a resume. But it is certainly a skill that can be learned. i believe your last two bullets should be the kinds of things every potential (lets just stick with the wall street idea) applicant should be doing anyway. </p>

<p>My point being: with an understanding of what the employer wants and the ability to sell yourself and accurately convey who you are and what makes you worthy; i don’t see why it would be ludicrous for an english major to get a wall street internship</p>

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<p>Denzera and Shraf - speaking for the humanities majors out ther</p>

<p>I think you are giving us short thrift. I received interviews at Bain, BCG and Mckinsey as a Hist major. Of my friends currently working for Mckinsey, one is a complit major, another is a philosophy major, a third was a spanish major (premed concentration). It does depend on what you call “consulting,” there are many consulting houses and jobs that I only heard of either engineers or econ college folks getting offered. At the interviews I would say there were a fair share of engineering folks, but when it actually came down to picking the jobs it went to the people with the best social skills (which trended humanities and some soc sci folks)</p>

<p>And I think you hit it on the head - people can’t apply for the hell of it. Like applying for college it takes a bit more preparedness. But these are also positions you can network your way into them, and many times the recruiters are like you Denzera, fresh out of college and know the top rung of leaders in the succeeding classes.</p>

<p>The humanities folks I know who are in banking many got into it because of an internship or succeeding internships which goes to building business acumen. I think that someone without any understanding of the analytical nature of the jobs is of course going to be punted, but if you can pass that proficiency then you are certainly within the margins.</p>

<p>The point is that it is not impossible, but also not entirely expected without a bit of effort. And as a final thing, of my friends - not a single one of them is making 30-35 except one guy working on Capitol Hill. We are all for the most part in the 40s+ starting out for those in the city and similar if adjusted for those out of the country. I did not find it difficult getting a job and found columbia’s network to be a huge help for even a humanities person.</p>

<p>Now this is not to compare or to say it is comparable to econ/eng folks. It is mostly to at least bring a fuller picture to the plight of the humanities folk. Study what you love, intern in your preferred career, and take econ/math/bus school classes on the side and you still have a chance at top firms.</p>

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<p>

well, yes, selling yourself well is a key skill and by no means limited to those with technical backgrounds - if anything, social/marketing skills are usually better among nontech majors.</p>

<p>but the primary requirement for most high-paying jobs out of college is analytical skills. I want to know that if you’re in a meeting with reps from the CFO, you have a command of your numbers, you’ve contributed some insights, and you can make intelligent requests for data and ask the right questions. Sure, you have to ask them in a diplomatic way and forge relationships with the client staff, that’s important too, but it’s much easier to find socialized people among a pool of real sharp analytical minds than it is to find someone who can crunch a data set among a bunch of social butterflies.</p>

<p>McKinsey seeks really really bright people who show characteristics of leadership and initiative. I too know plenty of history / polisci majors who ended up at the likes of McKinsey. They’re also the ones with 3.9s who were heavily involved in student government, or similarly unusual profiles. Those guys get taken care of. I’m talking more to the AVERAGE liberal arts student. If you’re not among the 1-2% of applicants from top schools whom McKinsey makes offers to, and you can’t get that job doing digital marketing at Disney or Google, or make it into the management rotational programs at a Johnson & Johnson or the like
 my point was, you don’t have total crap options as long as you’re coming out of Columbia, but it’s a lot harder to start your career off on the fast track.</p>

<p>As a result, a great many liberal arts majors have immediate plans for grad school / PhD, or law school. For some it’s a true passion, for others it’s a fallback.</p>

<p>

ok obviously I’m not speaking on behalf of my math-nerd ass, but I do know a great number of people who were in the situations I’m talking about. The class of 2006 usually found decent jobs in business in the city or elsewhere; the class of 2009 may not fare as well.</p>

<p>

I think you’ve hit on the exact issue. All too often, students take too long to “find themselves” and end up without an ability to present a focused passion in a job search or in interviews, no matter how good they are at selling themselves. If you know what your preferred career is after 5 semesters, you can get a good internship between Jr/Sr year and then be set up well for recruiting senior year. I’d say only about a third of Columbia students successfully manage to be this focused. Maybe it’s half. But it’s sure not 90%. And most of that third (half?) are those from a technical/analytical background anyway.</p>

<p>I agree that a liberal arts degree from Columbia is a pretty darn good thing, sets you up well for success if you use it correctly, and is a big leg up in a job search. But “how you use it” is dependent on a lot of things, including being able to demonstrate passion and personal initiative. Even though I didn’t find my own focus until senior year, I had a lot easier time playing catch-up because on the face of it, I’m better at “thinking” because I had the spiffy math major. A focused history or philosophy major who wants to become a consultant or the polisci guy who wants to be a research associate at a think tank, well, they’re already way ahead of where I was starting senior year. I think the East Asian Studies major who suddenly wakes up spring of senior year and decides they don’t want a PhD is in much greater trouble.</p>

<p>they may or may not be in for the “rude awakening” Shraf promised them, but they’re also not the kind of student you’re talking about.</p>

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<p>It just depends.</p>

<p>Finaid.org’s great Loan Calculator estimates that with a 6.8% interest rate, you will owe $69,048 total (principal + $19,048 in interest). They estimate that your monthly minimum payment will be just shy of $600, and that you will need an annual salary of at least $69,048 in order to afford this loan. This is assuming that you have the Stafford loan rate of 6.8%, a 10-year repayment period and that your rate is fixed, not variable. A variable rate and a higher rate will require more payment, and higher monthly payments and interest. Extended repayment will extend your payment 30 years but will greatly increase the amount of interest you pay.</p>

<p>A salary of $70,000 with a Columbia degree can be reasonably expected in some fields.</p>

<p>As for Smithview’s question, $120,000 in my opinion is just way too much. Also assuming the same thing (Stafford loan rates of 6.8%, 10 years repayment, fixed rate), they estimate that you would need a salary of almost $170,000 a year and that the monthly payments would be nearly $1400 a month. And that’s WITHOUT the law school loans – law school is very expensive, and a student could easily double this and have $200K or more in debt. Top tier law schools cost $40,000 a year in tuition and most of this is financed by loans – even if your child got half of his tuition remitted, that’s still $60,000 over three years added to the original $120,000 they incurred from undergrad. $180,000 in loans over 10 years at a 6.8% rate requires a monthly payment of over $2,000 and a yearly salary of $250,000. And all of that definitely won’t be Stafford loans at a 6.8% rate.</p>

<p>We cannot also “assuredly” say that a student who goes to Columbia will make more money or go to a better law school than a Grinnell graduate or a graduate of a public university. What you do at your undergrad matters far more than where you go. Several studies have shown that students who got into Ivy League equivalent schools, but turned them down for other places, had no measurable difference in salary from Ivy League grads. And a Columbia grad who is $120,000 in debt already may not even be able to afford law school.</p>

<p>And the idea that Columbia undergrad will make a measurable difference in becoming a professor is laughable. Search committees for faculty positions do not care where you went to undergrad. They care where you earned your Ph.D and more importantly how many publications you have, grants you have won, and who you did your grad training with.</p>

<p>I went to a good top 100 LAC for undergrad on a full ride. I had to take out a small amount of loans ($9,000, and I didn’t even need that much) for expenses not covered by the scholarship like books, transportation, and study abroad fees. I studied hard, did well, and got into Columbia for my Ph.D (which is also covered – tuition and fees, health insurance, and I receive a living stipend). I’m here now, and I had to take out a mid-sized loan ($8,500) to get started here (get my apartment, furniture, and supplies for school). All together including interest, my loan amount is just shy of $20,000 which is something that I can easily pay off in 5 years if I so wish with a salary I can reasonably expect with a Ph.D ($50,000).</p>

<p>Let me tell you, it is an absolutely beautiful feeling to know that I don’t have crushing debt on my head and that I can reasonably expect to pay my loans back in a short period of time. My undergrad degree is well-respected and my Columbia Ph.D will open all kinds of doors for me, not just within academia but also in other fields.</p>

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<p>Hi all,</p>

<p>Is there anybody here who was an independent student with 0 EFC? I am 23, a permanent resident in the U.S. and my family lives in another country. I wonder how much would my Pell Grant be, approximately
 before I made any decisions! I would really appreciate if you can share on how much the Pell Grant is?</p>

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<p>fafsa considers me an independent though the css profile does not
</p>

<p>i’m getting anywhere between $4000-5500 if that helps</p>

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<p>Thanks!!! Do they offer you any money in scholarships? I am just really trying to chance how much “free grant” help I’ll be getting if I’m in. Do you know if GS has Phi Theta Kappa scholarships?</p>

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<p>GS says on their website that they have a Phi Theta Kappa Scholarship, but after I got my scholarship award from GS I called to see if it included the Phi Theta Kappa Scholarship, or if I had been considered for it, and the woman in their scholarship office told me they didn’t have a separate PTK Scholarship. I don’t know if that really answers your question at all :slight_smile: I myself am a bit confused on the whole thing.</p>

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<p>Hmmm, that’s kind of strange
 I know it’s $ 6,000 to $ 8,000 but I also thought it is indicated on your award letter as such. Thanks for your answer though ;)</p>