Don’t kid yourself…“10K or so in loans a year” is $40,000+ worth of debt before you earn a dime as a professional, and before graduate school if that’s in the cards. It’s a LOT of money.
It will be a lot of money when you’re ready to buy your first house and still have that college loan to pay.
It will be a lot of money when your oldest needs braces and you still have that college loan to pay.
As to letting anyone down by your choice of college-- and Berkley at that???-- don’t give it a thought. You don’t owe anyone anything in this game. It’s not about your friends or your high school, it’s about YOU doing what’s best for YOUR future.
You got accepted into Brown. Wonderful. But it sounds to me as though Berkley is the better choice.
I went to community college, then commuted to the local university for both undergrad and grad school. It never occurred to me to do anything else-- I have 4 siblings and there simply wasn’t money to go away to school. But I was very lucky in that I grew up before the age of the internet; we had no idea that people worried about things like what others would think of our choice of college.
At the end of the day: all those people you’re worrying about disappointing won’t give you a thought in 4 years. They won’t remember your name or what schools you got accepted into or which one you choose. But if you choose Brown, you’ll still have that $40,000+ in debt to begin to pay off… a debt you took on because you didn’t want to disappoint people who haven’t given you a thought since your high school graduation.
Congrats on your acceptances. But I’m with your parents- choose Berkley.