Decision Time: UNLV, SDSU or UNR?

College Search & Selection
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<p>It has been 14 months since I first became active here on CC. I had narrowed down my college searches, from 25 schools nationwide to seven schools on the West Coast. Dreams of NYU, UC Irvine and University of Washington have been struck down by the reality of cost and student debt. I ended up only applying and getting into three schools, with only one being out of state:</p>

<p>University of Nevada, Las Vegas
University of Nevada, Reno
San Diego State University</p>

<p>Like I said, I have been successfully accepted to all three of these schools and I have received my financial aid packages. UNR estimates $22,000 a year while SDSU estimates $34,900. Here in my hometown, UNLV estimates $20,500 a year (with housing) while living at home would cost roughly $8,500 a year. You could easily split living on campus at UNLV or at home into a third and fourth option in itself! With an EFC of $16,000 from my FAFSA, its safe to say that I'm not eligible for much financial aid from the government. Before anyone helps give me any advice they have: I'm a Filipino-American born and raised in Las Vegas who wants to pursue Civil Engineering. Now, can anyone help me decide on where I should go for the next step in my life? ANY advice would be appreciated, thanks!</p>

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<p>Anyone???</p>

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<p>Are you accepted into the Engineering dept at all those colleges? Are you parents going to pay the costs or will you have to take on loans and how much will you have to take on?</p>

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<p>For UNLV, do you mean to say that your parents will fully subsidize your living and transportation expenses if you live at home and commute?</p>

<p>You need to figure out what your parents will contribute (if anything); a realistic amount to self-fund is no more than about $10,000 from federal direct loans plus work earnings.</p>

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<p>@brownparent Yes, I have been admitted to all three schools for engineering. Virtually all loans too, parents haven’t mentioned anything about helping me pay for anything besides living at home. Minimal scholarships besides for the Millenium Scholarship in Nevada for $2000 a year.</p>

<p>@ucbalumnus Yes, my parents plan to just take care of everything if I live at home. They would like to give me a car now as my senior year approaches its end but if I live anywhere else besides home including on campus at UNLV, no car and all the paying is basically on me. A realistic maximum or cap for loans is $10000? I never knew that. Loans for SDSU total $34000, UNLV with housing has $3000 in subsidized loans and $13000 in unsubsidized loans…</p>

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<p>No, a realistic maximum of loans would be federal direct loan limit of $5,500 in the first year. You can probably add work earnings of up to $4,500 per year in order to self-fund up to about $10,000 per year (at least that is what colleges that “meet full need” tend to assume that students can earn from work).</p>

<p>The overall maximum federal direct loan limit is $27,000 for all four years. More loans would require a co-signer, and are not generally considered a good idea anyway.</p>

<p>It looks like you basically have no choice but to live at home ($8,500 per year) versus living away from home ($20,500, $22,000, or $34,000 per year).</p>

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<p>You parents didn’t mention? Did you ASK?</p>

<p>You as a student may borrow $5,500 freshman year, $6,500 sophomore year, $7,500 each for Jr and Sr year In Federal Direct Loans. That’s all, no one else will lend you money without a cosigner. So I’m really confused about those large amounts of loans you are talking about, I can’t believe you were offered those loans. Are you saying that UNLV with housing package has $3,000 in loans and you are supposed to contribute $20,500 additional from family contribution?</p>

<p>You may work summers to contribute toward the cost of attending UNLV while living at home if your parents won’t contribute anything else. That looks like the only option you can afford, so it’s a nobrainer.</p>

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<p>If your parents won’t contribute their/your EFC, then UNLV commute is your only choice.
Can you give us costs BEFORE loans (but after any scholarship or grant you received)?</p>

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<p>@MYOS1634 UNLV (on-campus): $18,500. UNLV (off-campus): $6,500. UNR: $19,000. SDSU: $34,900. UNLV and UNR include very vague “personal costs” which totals almost $3000 a year. It’s not books, transportation, housing, board or tuition since they are in their own categories. If I ONLY include tuition, housing and books: UNLV (on-campus) is barely over $15,000 but I’ll just go along with their estimated cost of attendance. Now for the scholarships I already calculated into those totals: Millennium Scholarship for Nevada which is $1920 a year. UNLV didn’t give me any freshman scholarship since my FAFSA was 18 days pass the priority deadline but UNR offered me an additional $1500 a year since they have no FAFSA deadline (ugh, come on UNLV). Besides for these freshman and Millenium Scholarships, the rest has to be opened to loans. I’ve applied to roughly 20 scholarships which require essays but no yield as of yet. </p>

<p>@BrownParent I’ve slowly been approaching them about it but they seem to be avoiding the topic or discussion. I have a feeling that they think that this whole idea of college is something you plan for the month before it starts which is completely wrong. I’ve been planning and searching since October 2012. For UNLV, I was given $1000 in ‘Federal Direct Subsidized Loans’, $2000 in ‘Federal Direct Subsidized Loans’ and finally, $13000 in ‘Parent PLUS Loans’. I’ve taken about 15 minutes reading up on these loans and I’m still clueless on how they work and how they are all different. I assume the parent loan is the one requiring a cosigner… My family is planning to take our annual summer vacation and since Asia is on our minds this year, I could potentially be out of the country for a month this summer so the earliest time I could get a part time job would be this fall once college starts.</p>

<p>@ucbalumnus Refer to what I replied to BrownParent and MYOS1634^^^</p>

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<p>To make things clear with your parents, you should tell them what the deadline is to accept or decline your offers, put a calendar on the wall if necessary with a big red X.</p>

<p>That’s great that you did the work to apply for extra scholarships, I hope it pays off for you. It is a smart idea to understand how the financials work and take control of the situation, so you both know what you are getting into and can make smarter decisions. The financial aid forum has a FAQ pinned to the top of the forum threads if you want to start reading. But in brief:</p>

<p>Your own student loans don’t have to be paid back until 6 mo after graduation, then the ,monthly payments kick in.</p>

<p>So if you got Parent plus loans your parents must have applied? Those are your parent’s loans. Any repayment is on them legally. If you are going to pay them that’s between you. Are you sure they are going to sign for those? The payments on those start immediately. So it isn’t realistic that you can pay those while you are in school, your parents will have to.</p>

<p>I’m having just a little trouble following the numbers. So UNLV put that package together and how much are you supposed to come up with? You say 18k or is that mostly covered by the loans? Sorry if I am being dense.</p>

<p>I think before you go on vacation, you should nail down what you can afford for college. One possibility to consider is taking the car and getting a job this summer. Ask your parents to put your vacation money toward your college. It will be well worth it for your family to make some sacrifice now and you will hopefully have a nice paying engineering job in 4 years. Just a suggestion, take it or leave it.</p>

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<p>@BrownParent: some universities actually pretend to package financial aid by inserting PLUS loans in it! GRRRRRRRR</p>

<p>@DjBoom77:
Can you do it again and give us the numbers like this for each possibility (with 000 if the line is irrelevant)
Tuition
Room&Board
Commuting costs
Miscellaneous (books, etc)</p>

<p>Scholarships/grants
Federal subsidized and unsubsidized loans
PLUS Loans
Work Study
Other</p>

<p>Parent PLUS loans are taken by PARENTS. So your parents have to submit documentation and be accepted for it every year. The problem is that some parents qualify one year, then don’t, and the student ends up being stuck and having either to commute or even transfer. Your parents are likely to have $200 monthtly payments starting Spring of your freshman year, which will double if they’re approved for a second year loan, and triple if they’re approved for a third year loan, etc. and they will then pay for about 10 years.
They are NOT financial aid and, yourself, can’t sign for them. Only your parents can.</p>

<p>Subsidized and unsubsidized loans are loans you take on yourself. They’re subsidized or at least guaranteed by the government. Everyone, at every college, is entitled to them. For freshman year, you’ll get a total of $5,500. Then you’ll get $6,500. Then junior and senior year each you’ll get $7,500, for a total of $27,000, which is the maximum you can borrow for 4 years and the maximum a college graduate can hope to be able to pay back. (Even that much proves difficult for many students).</p>

<p>UNR is the better school and the cost differential makes it the better choice over UNLV on-campus… but it seems that if your parents won’t pay their EFC and if all you have in your financial aid package is loans, commuting to UNLV may be the only choice. And even that depends on your getting a job (theamounts you listed are after Millenial Scholarships/or UNR’s freshman scholarship but before the federal loans, right? Or did you factor those in?)</p>

<p>If those are your only possibilities, then you may have to take a gap year, or go to community college. Another alternative is to apply to colleges that still accept applications, many of them are pretty good and mustn’t be used to applications from Nevada so you’d bring geographical diversity, it may help.
Those schools are pretty good and include Albion, Hiram, Hendrix…</p>

<p>I wouldn’t be going on a vacation this summer… you’ll be expected to work to pay your student contribution.</p>