We are also planning to pay down a good bit, if not all, of my S’s government loans and, in fact, have already paid down a couple of thousand dollars on the unsubsidized one (which is already accruing interest, but not much). There are no prepayment penalties, BTW, so you can do that any time you have a little extra…if that ever happens,.
@MTDadandProud, I agree with you. My D is, thankfully, graduating without any debt thanks to her scholarships. And I don’t think ANY school is worth having that hanging over your kid’s head if they can avoid it. Yes, CMU is a good school, but is it worth the debt? I know PLENTY of kids with a MT degree from CMU that are not working in their field b/c they can’t get the jobs. No school can guarantee that. Are all programs created equal? Absolutely not. But do MANY of them have the connections, the training, and the resume to give your child an advantage? YES. CMU is not the be-all end all. It’s a good program, but there are several others that are just as good. So definitely weigh the amount of debt they will be left with…it is a factor that deserves consideration.
A perfectly valid opinion- and that’s why it is great that there are so many schools to choose from, people can do what feels right to them.
I was not meaning to infer in my post #17 that CMU was the be all end all. Of course no school can guarantee success. What I was trying to point out, is that the training/education rec’d at each of the various schools is in fact different. These MT programs are not fungible. They are not essentially the same. Some have better voice departments/cirriculum. Some have better acting training, etc. etc.
And for a particular student, it might in fact be worth an additional $40-60K over four years, or even more. Because a particular program (or even teacher) is what may be needed for a given student to have the best chance of success. That’s what I mean by being penny-wise and pound foolish.
If a student who really needs training in X for example, attends school Y, primarily because it is cheaper, but doesnt really have the training he needs, he may in fact be wasting his money altogether because he can’t really be successful without getting that needed X training. Its very individual. Its what we all talk about all the time. Its fit. If the cheaper school is not also the right fit, it is no bargain. That was my point. Not made very well I admit.
Gotta push back on “CMU is… a good program, but there are several others that are just as good.” Which schools are “just as good” as CMU in your opinion? This is a serious question - not snark.
The truth of the matter is that no school is worth it if it’s the wrong fit for the student. People transfer from CMU too.
Not taking a stand on this, @vocal1046, because there is really no way I could know (and I know you weren’t asking me anyway), but I have been in rooms where the argument was made that CMU isn’t actually a better program than the rest, it just takes/gets the most already-polished kids who would probably do well anywhere. I worked with a Harvard grad once who always said that Harvard really wasn’t that great of a school, it was just really hard to get into, lol. It’s kind of a chicken/egg question, not meant to disparage CMU (or Harvard!) at all because they obviously have lots of successful graduates out there. But to really judge how good a program actually is, you’d have to figure out a way to measure how well each program is able to transform someone from not-ready to ready-for-prime-time. Judging a program on how well students do when they come out may be meaningless unless you know what they were like going in.
I think any school experience will largely reflect the student’s engagement. I was just curious which schools @monkey13 had in mind.
The chicken/egg argument could be made for any of the top five (and beyond). So that doesnt really separate any one top program from the rest. (They don’t take kids for potential alone. They take them because they have a degree of accomplishment.)
But I will admit- I have seen kids (virtually on cc, and in real life- a choice made yesterday has me concerned) turn down long established programs for “hot” programs which have buzz - and a lower price tag, but not a long track record. I have wondered if that is a wise choice in the “penny wise and pound foolish” sense. It remains to seen (especially for my young friend) and there are many paths to success, but the question remains in my mind.
I am not going to go there, @vocal1046. I don’t want to insult anyone by not including their kid’s school, or open up the can of worms that comes from this type of ranking. It is, after all, my opinion, but I would hazard a guess that there are many others on this board that think there are other schools just as good as CMU. And you can probably guess several of them. But I stand by my comment. CMU is good, but there are equally good schools, in my opinion.
GSO’s right, it has to be a ‘fit’. You have a fantastic ‘problem’ @MTDadandProud. And If we had your problem, we’d look under every rock, every scholarship page, every potential source to get him. You’re right, he’s going to be an actor, not a doctor, and you don’t know where it will lead. But that’s the thing… you just don’t know!? I remember Josh Groban saying how only 1/2 of his freshman class actually graduated from CMU because everyone else (including him) got phenomenal job offers while still in school. Maybe its not the school; maybe all the kids there would do well no matter where they go… maybe not. But the people hiring the talent certainly look there first. To me its more about the possibilities than the reality.
You have a tough choice… and I’m sure we all envy your choice.
And if you want to start a indiegogo or a ‘gofundme’ account, the first 10 bucks is on me. …yes, this is renewable for all four years. 
Careful, @pghmusician, in assuming a binary actor/doctor universe. I know several doctors who spent up to fifteen years as working artists (supporting themselves ably as actors, dancers, musicians, etc) and who found that they were, as a result, much more desirable candidates for admission when they chose to redirect their lives toward medicine. In fact, I know a few who are not just doctors but professors of medicine who now evaluate applicants to med school/residency and are thrilled when such a candidate turns up to interview. A narrowly focused careerist applicant right out of college is far less compelling.
Also, a wake up call about “They are going to be actors, not doctors.” On top of college, med school is a massive expense, usually involving quite a bit of borrowing. Residency salaries at prestigious institutions hover around $50K (with insane hours and pressure) and relatively few doctors ever make piles of money. Transplant surgeons, yes. Primary care docs? Not so much. It is odd that we use “doctor” as the catch-all for making lots of dough. Doctors are not really employable as doctors until long long after college and, with rare exceptions, they graduate with far more debt than they are likely to earn in a year ever. The people raking in the piles of cash are administrators, MBA’s whose career mission is to maximize profits for themselves and the institutions that employ them.
We met a girl at the S’s CMU audition who had graduated from the program and was nannying and auditioning. (Nothing wrong with this, but it punched a hole in the “golden ticket” idea.)
Wow! I really opened an unintended can of worms! The bottom line is this is a different answer for every family, For our family we have made a decision about how much debt we are willing to let our S (and us) acquire for college. (he’s got a sibling, ya know?). We have requested a review of the financial aid at the institution in question. We will either get it or we won’t. If not, it will be sad for a while but we will move on. Fortunately, he was accepted to other fine training programs and one other he really loves and will be happy at if this doesn’t work out.
@MTDadandProud, it’s a can of worms because we are all struggling with this issue in one way or another. (And justifying or not justifying a hugely expensive arts education to ourselves, hence the level of emotion.) Best of luck to you and your S. I hope you’ll come back and tell us how he’s getting along regardless of where he ends up.
I have often made the arguement (to well meaning but nay-saying family members don’t approve of my kid majoring in theater) that there are no guarantees. My nephew who is a STEM graduate (from a dang prestigious school) is a barista (for the last year and a half after graduation.) He joked over break that he would teach my daughter to make lattes b/c it’s the most fiscally important skill he has ever learned. He graduated with a pile of debt- but no one in the family gave him crap for choosing the super expensive school… My kid will have no debt (of her own) and still we get told we are throwing $ away. Sigh…
Just for the record, the average base pay for a starting primary care physician is $189,000 with an average debt of $140,000 (2012 statistics in Forbes - see the link below). Note that the debt amount is LESS than the first year salary. On average, doctors make a lot of money.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2012/07/20/the-best-and-worst-paying-jobs-for-doctors-2/
My d’s “fallback plan” is to “hang out by the med school.”
Funny, my son is just putting all his chips on “stripper” but I suppose I could redirect him to sell himself for money in a subtler way. Good thought!
OMG @EmsDad, you make me laugh because I had a graduate school roommate who did that. And it worked! She is now a happy doctor’s wife on Long Island. 