Giant Question! please answer!

Paying for College
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<p>Hey, maybe some of you have read my previous post but for those who didn't...
Im a high need international student accepted at Oxford College of Emory with 1/3 tuition scholarship. That isn't nearly enough what I need to make possible my attendance to oxford. So I have two decisions in front of me:</p>

<p>1) Take a leap year. Retake the SATs, attempting to get a 2300+ score so I can try my luck at some of the best colleges that guarantee full financial aid for international students and do whatever is in my hand to improve my "curriculum" for admission.</p>

<p>2) Take up an international student Loan. The amount would be around 100k USD with a fixed rate of 8% annual. That would suffice.</p>

<p>So my question is, what should I do? Would taking up the loan would be too hard for me to repay (Im majoring in creative writing, so yeah, no job security there) Taking a leap year would hurt my chances for admission next year? Any comment would be highly appreciated. </p>

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<p>3) Go to school in your country.</p>

<p>From the mother of a kid who majored in English with a CW concentration, that’s way too much debt to take on for an UG degree. Many writers go on for an MFA in CW; few of these programs support their students through fellowships/scholarships, and of course the ones that do are the most competitive. These programs take literally a handful of new students each year. And beyond that the percentage who end up making a living between writing and teaching writing is probably equivalent to being a pro athlete.</p>

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<p>Thanks for your input, but there’s a problem with your advise. There in nothing even remotely similar to an English degree with a CW concentration or a CW degree in my country. Besides, if you think that living from writing or teaching writing is the equivalent to being a pro athlete in the USA, in my country it would be the equivalent of being a top 10 tennis player (or maybe im being to generous, for there is only one single writer who lives from writing in my country). So that’s why I chose to study abroad. </p>

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<p>What was your SAT CR+M score?</p>

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<p>Because you’re a writer, the word you want is advice as it’s a noun and advise is a verb (not trying to be snarky, it’s one of those tricky word pairings in English). </p>

<p>The problem is that 100k is really too much loan debt with little prospect of making enough money to pay it back in the near or even possibly long term. You should be advised to read some of the threads on student loans on this forum.</p>

<p>So, if CW is the only route you see taking, then I’d have to go with option 1 and try to do something that will help your application during your gap year. If colleges will look at CW supplements, try to have a short piece, no novels please, that will knock them dead.</p>

<p>Best of luck, the world needs more good writers!</p>

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<p>The term is “gap year”, not “leap year”. </p>

<p>The debt you’re considering is absolutely insane. And It’s hard to believe any lender would actually provide that amount to a student with poor earnings prospects unless you’re mortgaging your soul as part of the deal. (Does this lender have horns and a forked tail?)</p>

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<p>@bobwallace My Sats are 620 Math, 650 CR and 750 Writing. Yeah… Im planning on improving them. @entomom‌ that was a typo not an error haha but thanks. On terms of improving my application for next year, obviously I thought of trying to get a 2300 + score as I mentioned before. Besides, I’ve published a novel in spanish already but I’ve got another one twice as long (140k words) yet to publish (In spanish to - I plan to release it before september) and that means a lot of advertising and interviews (so I guess that would help) and Im currently writing third novel, this time in english and Ill try to get it published too by the time of my application. To all that you could add maybe an internship in a publishing house and a payed work someone offered me and a couple of things more. Do you think that would be enough for me to be accepted on a school that offers need blind full financial aid for international students? (Princeton or cornell for example)
Ahhh and another thing, I’m planning on taking the DELF B2 French Exam. That’s all, I think. </p>

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<p>I think the prospects of going from a 2020 SAT to a 2300+ SAT are unlikely at best. You need a plan B that doesn’t involve raising your SAT score from 94th percentile to >99th percentile.</p>

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<p>

Your SAT scores need to be higher See <a href=“Princeton University: Acceptance Rate, SAT/ACT Scores, GPA”>http://collegeapps.about.com/od/collegeprofiles/p/Princeton_prfil.htm&lt;/a&gt;

See <a href=“Cornell University: Acceptance Rate, SAT/ACT Scores”>http://collegeapps.about.com/od/collegeprofiles/p/Cornell_profile.htm&lt;/a&gt;

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<p>If anyone says they can answer this question they either don’t know what they’re talking about or they’re lying. The most anyone could possibly say is that someone is a competitive candidate for this level of colleges. </p>

<p>Other major factors which you haven’t addressed are your HS gpa and class rigor (no need to list them for me, adcoms have know how to evaluate them for Intl. applicants, I do not). These are part of your application that cannot be improved over your gap year, but are very important for admissions. </p>

<p>What Spanish speaking country has only a single professional writer??</p>

<p>Who published your first novel? </p>

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<p>Burdening yourself with $100K in debt is going to kill your writing career. You won’t be able to think about anything else than your debt. Sure, Dickens managed to write some masterpieces as he was struggling to buy food for his family, but I bet he would have enjoyed writing more if he had not been under such financial duress.</p>

<p>I agree with taking option 1, if you feel like you really need to attend a university in order to hone your craft. That said, you could just work on honing your craft, while keeping your life simple and debt-free, building your writing career without sitting in a classroom in which other students tell you what is wrong with your writing (why pay $100K for that?) Maybe someday you would have an opportunity to become a writer-in-residence, and you would be getting paid by the university, rather than vice versa.</p>

<p>Faulkner’s opinion is one I think about a lot when it comes to writing as a profession (when it really is an art):</p>

<p>“Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.”</p>

<p>Follow Faulkner’s path, and you won’t need to take out $100K in student loans :)</p>

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<p>I completely agree with Chesterton. Picking up 100k in student loan debt would be absolutely, undeniably, pathetically, outrageously, incredibly, enormously STUPID. I’m sorry if no one here will say it to your face, but snap out of it! Are you insane? </p>

<p>Debt kills dreams. If you have debt shackling you down in your twenties, you will try to fly, you will sink down, and you will fail. You won’t be able to handle the pressure and low self-esteem that comes with writing (especially in the beginning), and the anxiety of having your creditor call every month asking for loan payments will destroy you. </p>

<p>You do NOT need college to become a writer. You need skill. Unfortunately for most people, a lot of that skill is innate. Can you learn to be a better writer? Absolutely. I’m a firm believer that reading instructional books and practicing can greatly help you hone your skills as a writer. But unfortunately, some of it will always be out of your hands. There are aspiring fiction writers who graduate from Harvard and Princeton and they can’t (pardon my French) write, and then there are writers like J.K. Rowling, Steven King, or Quentin Tarantino who end up writing on the backs of napkins, in trailers high on cocaine, and in the back of DVD rental stores and they churn out masterpieces. None of these writers had any formal education on writing (I know Tarantino even dropped out of school when he was 15). But they had the skill, nonetheless. </p>

<p>Bottom line, the real question is how much you’re willing to pay to find out said truth: that is, whether or not you suck. It’s terrifying, but it’s necessary. There are a hundred ways to figure this out - get coverage, submit your work to contests, query managers, post your work online, or even give it to a stranger (preferably not friends/family, they won’t be honest), and NONE of these methods come with a 100k price tag. Waving a piece of paper in someone’s face won’t convince them you’re a good writer. Only one thing and one thing only will do that, and that’s a sample of your writing. If you simply don’t write very well, or can’t come up with a truly amazing story and characters, the battle is lost, regardless of your school. If you can do these things extraordinarily well, the battle is half won regardless of your school. </p>

<p>Good luck to you. I would suggest you either a) major in something more practical, or b) take a gap year to give writing your all and then (if things don’t go well) return to college again for a more practical degree. Or, you can major in creative writing at a school that won’t sink you in debt, or double major, or minor in creative writing. Anything besides your original plan. SAT’s and high school scores mean NOTHING in the creative world. These statistics say nothing about your skills as a writer. Separate your academic history from writing completely. The two are unrelated.</p>

<p>Good luck, really. </p>

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<p>Thanks very much for all the feedback! Because of guys like you I posted my problem here in the first place. I really, really appreciate the honesty and the advice and it has helped a lot. Im going with option 1, because of the many reason you’ve listed here. I know there is no need for college to be a great writer, I really do, but I feel in my heart that that’s what I gotta do. And it’s not only all about the learning for me. The whole experience is something I’ve yearned since I was a kid. Besides, being born in Argentina ( Yes, that’s the country where only one writer lives entirely from his writing and that’s Marcos Aguinis @entomom) I’ve got no option but to introduce my self in the english/american market to be able to live from what I love doing. It may seem romantic or an impossible reality, but Ill do whatever it takes to achieve my dream. </p>

<p>I’m not being egocentric or anything like that when I say I’m a rather intelligent person. I’ve always been told so and I firmly believe it. My writing is quite strong, at least in spanish (english doesn’t come hard to me, but there’s nothing like one’s original language). </p>

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<p>@BobWallace I know for certain I can get a 2300+ in this years SATs. Last year I was handling school (best private school in my region) and sitting for the AICE (international A-levels) and besides, I prepared for the SATs with but a month anticipation. I didnt even know what the exam was like. Math, I really never payed attention to it, CR I wasnt used to reading so much in english (Ive been reading only in english for a whole year now, taking into account I read about a book per week) and Writing, I got a 750 just because I scored a 9 in my essay (I hadnt done any practice before the one I did for the actual exam). Ive got a 4.0 GPA and have taken the A-levels, as I mentioned before @entomom‌ </p>

<p>Before ending this point and thanking you all once again, I wanna tell you @abcde11 that Im not doing this for the piece of paper. Having a degree will do me not much good. As I said earlier, I want all what comes with the college experience.</p>

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<p>What is this nonsense about there only being one Argentine writer? What about all these people for starters?
<a href=“http://www.argentinaindependent.com/top-story/five-new-argentine-novels-in-english/”>http://www.argentinaindependent.com/top-story/five-new-argentine-novels-in-english/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>^Agreed, my husband was Argentine, Argentina has a strong literary tradition.</p>

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<p>Then I must be going quite blind.</p>

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<p>@brownparent Maybe I wasnt very clear about it. The problem isnt that there arent any professional writers in Argentina, the problem is that the system is so flawed that only one writer can live solely from his books. This isnt my invention, I was told so by the head of one of the biggest publishing houses here in Argentina. </p>

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<p>We live in an information heavy world. Anyone can run the net price calculators on college websites. Anyone can google stories families who got into financial distress due to the cost of higher education. No, I don’t think the majority of students can get through college without some debt but to hack up $100K in undergrad loans is disturbing.</p>

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<p>Most writers ANYWHERE don’t live solely from book sales, most also teach, as I mentioned before.</p>

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<p>If it an engineering degree or something that can get you a job at $100k/yr soon after graduation, perhaps that $100k debt is okay. Even in that case, you need to be sure you can get a job with your visa status.</p>

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<p>I don’t think you can take a $100k loan, so I think your only option is to take the gap year and start fresh. Are you sure there are schools that award full financial aid to international students with those stats?</p>