<p>I’m talking about parent loans. Are students able to get huge non-colateralized loans?</p>
<p>I’m talking about both. Parents are overextended too because they find it too difficult to say no. My very dear friend has no credit and is in so much trouble She cosignedd a slew of loans for her daughter and her son, and owes over a quarter million at this point with interest. One kid still isn’t finished with college and the is still working part time and isn’t making much. THey can’t even pay the interest accrued. What is going to happen with this monster of loan , I don’t know. And they are not alone.</p>
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<p>I’m sure that this is covered in other threads, but what I’ve heard is that for independent contractors the problem is with your business expenses. The colleges assume they aren’t legit and add them back.</p>
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<p>Students can’t get these huge loans with a cosigner. That MAY have been possible a long time ago but in THIS credit market nosirree!! YES the loans are nondischargizable in bankruptcy but that doesn’t help much if the person is broke or working part-time or something and can’t pay off the loans in less than like 30 years. They need a cosigner and the cosigners (usually parents or grandparents) are often the ones stuck with the bill when/if the student can’t pay it.</p>
<p>Honestly, it’s not worth it. the whole “dream school” mentality is fun but it’s not worth $100–250K of debt plus interest. That’s just nuts and i feel awful for the kids and families who get suckered into this by starry-eyed dreams. The reality is for most people getting a solid college education at a reputable school is ENOUGH. the rest of it is what YOU make of it, the whole, “I have to go to NYU STERN or I will be unemployable for life.” is such a huge error. (NOT picking on NYU, just saying that it’s not the only college that finds jobs for its students).</p>
<p>Another issue is that a lot of kids get through high school having NO IDEA how a household is run. They don’t know how much their parents make OR how much it really costs to have electricity, water, a place to live, food, water, gas, auto, insurance, etc. SO they say stuff like, “if I make $60,000 a year after graduating I should be able to live in Manhattan or Boston and still pay off a $150,000 student loan tab.” with NO IDEA how nutty that sounds.</p>
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Doesn’t help much??? A loan being non-dischargeable in bankruptcy doesn’t “help” AT ALL. It’s not meant to help anyone but the lender. It means the obligation will follow the borrower to the grave, regardless of any bankruptcy. Axeand238, I know your heart is in the right place, but you’ve been posting some confusing or just plain inaccurate information. Please take a little more time with crafting your responses, or better yet, take a break and spend some time reading posts by some of the financial aid experts on this forum, who have a lot to offer. It would be awful if one of your inaccurate posts led someone to make a poor financial decision.</p>
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<p>Um, that’s what I was talking about. The whole point of making the loan nondischargeable is to help the LENDER by (in theory) reducing the risk. For other loans like car loans or mortgages the lender has the recourse of being able to reclaim the car or the house if the borrower fails to pay, but with an education loan the amount of the loan can be as large as for a car or a house but there is no PHYSICAL asset for the bank to reclaim if the student borrower fails to pay the loan. This is PART of the reason why bank lobbyists lobbied for this change to be made to the US Bankruptcy Code as well as for the legislations, Bankruptcy Amendments and Federal Judgeship Act of 1984 and of course the old BAPACA of 2005 which tightened up bankruptcy provisions pretty much across the board as well!</p>
<p>HOWEVER, in the current credit market even the fact that the loan is nondischargeable doesn’t do much to assuage lenders’ fears – they STILL require cosigners because they know that even though the loan can’t be discharged in bankruptcy the borrower could still have a hard time paying it back if they fall on hard times and they won’t see their money back in any timeframe. So they won’t make the loan without a cosigner even though the loan is nondischarged because for them the risk is high despite that.</p>
<p>(Note that this comment was in response to vonlost’s comment, “students can’t borrow these large amounts on their own” query).</p>
<p>What part of that is wrong/inaccurate? Just because I don’t use the exact sames word/language as you doesn’t mean that what I said is wrong, right? :D</p>
<p>I get your point now, but I find your posts hard to follow, so I’ll just skip 'em from now on.</p>
<p>Axand, I have to agree. Many of your responses and comments are inaccurate. You, yourself, have posted a number of “oops” replies when folks have corrected you.</p>
<p>I am not sure where you are getting your information, but in MY opinion, much of it is misleading.</p>
<p>Sorry to digress, but FWIW, re post #112, out of curiosity I looked up the numbers myself, as best as I could find, for % students from New York State for some private colleges within 2 hours of Ithaca, NY.</p>
<p>Cornell: Endowed colleges 21%; Contract colleges (the ones that have lower tuition for NYS residents) 49%, Aggregate 33%
Ithaca College 44%
Hobart & William Smith Colleges (1 hr N-NW) 38%
University of Rochester (1-3/4 hr NW) 36%
Syracuse U (1 hr N-NE) “just over 40%” (2003)
Colgate U (1-1/2hrs NE)- 32% (1999)
Hamilton College (1-3/4hrs NE) -30%</p>
<p>Monydad, I wouldn’t compare those schools to Cornell. (And I like those schools, particularly Hamilton which, by the way, has a <em>lower</em> percentage of NY students than Cornell! LOL) I mean, I am sure Pace has a high number of instate residents too-- but it is not comparable to Columbia, is it? The schools outside the top competitive level often do get more regional applicants-- not only because they are better known regionally than nationally but because students from far away and other countries are not beating at their door to attend like they are for the ivy schools. </p>
<p>On post #111, you wrote that, “It is commonplace for colleges to draw the predominance of their students from within 4-6 hour drive of their campus. Given Cornell’s western NY location, it so happens this places a large proportion of its primary target audience in NY and MidAtlantic.” However, I’ve already shown that the ivies within 4-6 hours of the bulk of New York’s population have significantly lower numbers than Cornell. And it is easier to commute from NYC and the suburbs to Harvard , Yale or UPenn than it is to Cornell.</p>