how much debt is a more rigourous/enjoyable/prestigious undergrad education worth?

Paying for College
1

<p>Is it worth 20k of debt? 40k?</p>

<p>Should the money be saved for grad school, or does a more enjoyable undergrad experience actually mean something in the long term?</p>

<p>Furthermore, I plan to live frugally following graduation -- since I tend to eschew cars, thrive on $0.50/ib pasta and congee and the only luxuries I endorse are electronics that have a high marginal benefit for marginal cost -- and living tihs way is quite natural/painless for me (I detest waste and decadence). I wouldn't mind living in a trailer as long I have wireless internet, gaming and music. Will forking out 30-50% of my salary for 10 years be ever worth those "amazing" four years plus maybe a few years of grad school?</p>

<p>Will it pay off after you reach age 30?</p>

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<p>In the stone age, I took on a bunch of college debt. It meant I couldn’t take an unpaid position that I wanted that would have been meaningful for a potential career choice. It meant that I couldn’t take a year off of college when I should have in order to re-consider my major field (the debt would have come due during the off year, and the financial aid package was not guaranteed should I return to my college). It meant that when I was finished grad school and had no job yet I had to ask for a hardship deferment. It meant that every time I was between jobs, or not in school somewhere, I was living with my parents and letting them feed me. It meant that the second bill I paid every month after I finally had a job was to the loan company (the first bill was for my rent). </p>

<p>However, by deliberately living on the cheap, I got rid of that hideous bill in only about 3 years once I did have a job. Everything was paid off when I was 35. Going into debt also meant that I was able to attend my dream school for four years, and then change careers and attend another university for a year and a half before going to grad school in the new field. Oh yeah, I did a grad program where they paid me to go to school (I had teaching and research assistantships).</p>

<p>My total loans in the '70s and '80s were in the range of 8k or 9k. I can’t put my hands on the records or I’d give you the exact figure. Some were at 3%, and I think the others were at 7%. I’m guessing in today’s figures this would translate into a bit more than 20k. So, I expect that 20k to 40k would be do-able. But I am not going to say that you should do this. Not only do I not want to feel guilty if it doesn’t work out well, I know your mom would kill me!</p>

<p>What you are proposing is not easy. I am not going to recommend it to you or to anyone. Only you know if your dream school is worth it to you.</p>

<p>Wishing you all the best as you face these decisions, and wishing you much success in your future endeavors.</p>

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<p>I guess you would have to look in to the future and see what possible scenarios you might face. Does going to this college give you an advantage that another might not? If it is mostly about the “name” then the school is definitely not worth large loans.</p>

<p>My daughter is going to NYU, her dream school. With her student loans and loans we expect to take on, it is going to be really tight for all of us for the next several years. However, NYU, offers the kind of program and opportunities that are unique to her major. She will also be in a city that is key to what she wants to major in (International Affairs + Public Health). She is also the type who will take seek out and take advantage of internships etc. to get her foot in the door. Part of the college education sphere is the classroom learning but the part that can really make or break your future success is the extra opportunities that many provide and whether you are the type of student who will take advantage of them.</p>

<p>Anyway to answer your question, we are taking on about 16,000/year including both student (6,000) and parent (10,000) loans. As per our situation, the loans seem worth it.</p>

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<p>But I really don’t know! My mother was educated in my birth country (Singapore), although she had her second degree in political science at a local university), so she’s unfamiliar with this area in this regard on how much is worth borrowing . My birth country heavily subsidises education with 70-95% <em>grants</em> – even if you’re fairly rich, you can get that amount of aid as long as you commit to a service bond of around two years (or a bit more) to the Singaporean economy – so she didn’t realise that student debt was such a huge issue (her tuition at an unremarkable local university here being naturally cheap).</p>

<p>I want to do a combination of linguistics + cognitive science + bioengineering, and ideally my school would be at UVA. </p>

<p>I could also choose to go to an in-state school (University of Maine at Orono) where they don’t offer linguistics, have a pretty good engineering programme, offer some opportunities (of which I am unsure of the rigour of) in the biological fields. I’m unsure about the opportunity to go into neuroscience. However, I got accepted into the Honors College, so maybe I’ll get more leverage in pursuing my majors – so they offer, but I don’t know if they’re just being cheesy in their boasting (e.g. just upping the ante on the intensity of specific classes but not really doing anything holistically as far as access to research resources and so forth). I’m worried, because they act like the chance to write a senior thesis is oh-so-remarkable thing, and it makes me doubt the rigour of the overall experience.</p>

<p>To me, my desired career is to be an academic or a researcher, so ideally, I want to work with enthusiastic peers, faculty who are pursuing research themselves and it would be nice to have ample research opportunities. The name’s nice too, but I really only care about it if it helps to get me a higher income to pay off loans. [My ultimate goal is to pursue knowledge. A relatively comfortable lifestyle helps.] One of my goals is to comprehensively document linguistic variation and diversity across age and ethnic groups in my home region (Malaysia, Singapore and Malaysia), especially pertaining to creoles, since these areas tend to be eschewed by national governments in Southeast Asia in favour of nationalistic language policies. But of course, as a HS student I really don’t know anything about how research ideas are approved or received, especially from a lowly undergraduate, be it UMO or UVA (which is why it’s so hard for me to decide – I just don’t know how it’s going to turn out). To me, UVA isn’t a “dream school” – it was pretty fortunate that I added it as a last minute choice actually, or I wouldn’t have been admitted anywhere but my safety school, but I am pretty excited about going.</p>

<p>The other thing is that the FA application was submitted late, which is why I haven’t gotten my package back, and I’m really worried that the late part will screw me over. But I heard UVA covers 100% need, but I’m a tad worried that a good part of that coverage will be mostly loans.</p>

<p>There’s a third possibility – I could go back to my home country and apply to the National University of Singapore – although I missed the admission deadline for this year so I’ll have to wait till next February. The tuition for each year will be like 2600 USD per year. The facilities, faculty and peers will tend to be more rigourous (so I perceive), since about the top 10-15% of the nation goes there. However, since I am an atypical case (I am applying with an American HS diploma + maybe an AP International Diploma, if that signifies anything) with a 2100 SAT (not the minimum for an application, since they stipulate minimum 600 CR, 650 M and 600 WR) will be the minimum for a “competitive” application.</p>

<p>They don’t have a linguistic department per se (as far as I know), but they have distinguished faculty with degrees in linguistics, some of whose papers I have read. I have little idea about I will be able to pursue my majors though, as far as being able to craft my own majors though. The other downsides are that it’s in Singapore – and I am a bit frightened about returning to a repressive political climate (as far as freedom of speech is concerned) that haunted me during Singaporean secondary school. I want to come back to campaign for political reform, but my initial plans wanted to do that <em>after</em> my education was completed. Of course, maybe college students will be allowed a bit more intellectual freedom, because reading papers from that school, I’ve been impressed by the originality and rigour of thought that I thought would have otherwise been suppressed by the Singapore government and/or the pro-establishment University authorities. I intend to write several papers documenting the suppression of linguistic diversity in Singapore, both by the government and by cultural stigma, and as such I have no idea how they will be received. I might also be called to be drafted for national service for two years (which from loss of income might be worse than the loans? I don’t mind the physical rigours of service – but I just want freedom of the mind), in addition to a service bond to the Singaporean economy for two more years. </p>

<p>But my single mother can definitely afford to pay 2600 USD per year – and I would graduate debt free, with a respectable NUS degree (well-recognised in Southeast Asia and known a bit fairly in the world).</p>

<p>What I would like is intellectual freedom and the ability to flourish and not be stifled, especially since I’ve felt like I’ve been suffocating intellectually since primary school. But is it worth 40k in debt not to postpone it for four years? I don’t know if I’m being like Esau who just wants his soup now and would throw away his birthright for short-term relief.</p>

<p>Whoa … such a long post … maybe I should have posted this in the College selection forum; but I haven’t received my financial aid package from UVA yet so maybe a general discussion on how much debt an intellectually rigourous undergrad education is worth will suffice. </p>

<p>My basic dilemma I guess is I don’t know whether it’s worth borrowing 40k just to build intellectual and research networks a few years early, especially if I can gain an education with greater marginal benefit per marginal cost in less ambitious schools. Maybe someone can reassure me that intellectual growth is exponential and that cost will be worth it over the long-term. On the other hand, will the probability of my being enrolled at a competitive grad school decrease should I choose to enroll at a less ambitious school?</p>

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<p>There are very real advantages to being a big fish in a small pond, meaning you may stand out more for recommendation letters and research opportunities in the lower ranked school.</p>

<p>To me, $40,000 is a whole lot of money that may limit your options. There’s an old saying, “The borrower is the lender’s slave.” If you get an amazing opportunity out of grad school to travel doing ethnological linguistic studies with a professor who can pay your expenses, but no salary, you can’t take it if you have to make payments on debt. </p>

<p>As far as intellectual freedom goes, I don’t know what the situation is in Singapore, but from some other political situations there, I would wonder if you’d have the freedom there that you would here. $2600 is pretty tempting, though :-)</p>

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<p>You seem to have a very clear idea of what you want to work on. Where are the people who are doing the research that interests you? Have you read their publications? Maybe you want to start there and re-select your university. You could get your general ed. and intro level psych and linguistics out of the way at Orono while you are tracking down the creole experts that you really need to be working with.</p>

<p>Did I already suggest that you check out McGill or was that another cognitive science student?</p>

<p>And boy am I jealous! What cool stuff!! What cool options!! Creoles are the bomb!</p>

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<p>One more thing that should be taken into consideration is your immigration status in the US. If you are a permanent resident, it will be a real drag to maintain that status while studying abroad. We managed to do it for eight years for happydad while he was conducting research that he couldn’t do in the US (the animals he was working with aren’t here), but it was a huge hassle. Where would you live in Singapore? With family? On your own? How would you pay for that? And, what about transportation to-and-from there? These expenses need to be considered on top of the tuition.</p>

<p>If you know what you want to work on for your Ph.D. and subsequent professional research career, then you can plan your undergraduate coursework in such a way that you will be headed into the right Ph.D. program. You can start corresponding with the researchers whose work is interesting to you now. Some of them may take an interest and have useful advice for you in planning your studies, others might help you come up with a research project or internship. Another possible resource for you is the English as a Second Language department. They have former students in many fields of studies who are working all over the world now, not to mention that if the university offers a TESOL training program, the professors know what creoles are.</p>

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<p>Right now…? That just seems frightening to me. :{ </p>

<p>I haven’t really thought of immigration status as an issue – I am definitely attached to both countries, so my plan so far has been to span my life across both nations (and maybe when life is more prosperous I can afford to make trips back and forth). I actually kept my PR while I stayed for four years in Singapore – the only reason why I am afraid to sign up for US citizenship is I am afraid my Singaporean citizenship will be revoked (dual citizenship is not allowed, but I do support a local lobby that challenges this, maybe with greater Opposition power it will gain ground). I have contemplated getting US citizenship in secret – the Singapore government doesn’t have to know that I naturalised (but of course I don’t know much about the legal mechanisms of a formal naturalisation process). </p>

<p>I sort of have a clear idea of what I want to work on I guess, but I don’t know it’s to the extent that I feel ready to plan my future schools around researchers I want to meet (though it does seem like a very good idea). Linguistics for me was a convergence of multiple different interests (history, acoustics and physiology, psychology and neuroscience, learning a language well) so while I definitely want to do fieldwork and data-collection, it’s not the only thing I want to do. </p>

<p>Most of the things so far are just ambitions and ideas. I have some really weird ones that I am not sure will be received well, like seeing if prison authorities will let me study prisoners’ speech (like attaching localised bugs in a cafeteria) in order to study code-switching and rapid language change [vocabulary and codes must change frequently in order to evade the authorities]. (The other thing is that I am of course worried about ethics/civil rights.) One thing I am fascinated with is lexical diffusion (the principle that language change takes time to spread across a language community) but our conception of how it occurs is rather vague. But these are just ideas; I would like to be able to try them out, but I am unsure of committing to them totally as a career plan (since I expect a good portion of them not to work). </p>

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<p>I don’t remember being advised to do so, but I have checked it out. I wanted to apply, but I already had eight different apps out, and it seemed the only option of studying there without paying an insane amount of tuition was to major in French (which could be fine, but it seemed that linguistics and biological sciences would come second to that). </p>

<p>But I am rather confused – since most deadlines for apps have already passed, is it suggested that I enroll somewhere cheap for now and try transferring to other re-selected schools later?</p>

<p>A good portion of the people I wanted to meet happen to be holding tenure at schools like Penn and Swarthmore, and in fact I applied to some schools because I was impressed with some of their faculty whose papers I had read (it shouldn’t be surprising that I got rejected from all of them). But I do suppose you are referring to international experts to be met after undergraduate education. </p>

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<p>This puts me in a real dilemma indeed! I was just reassured in another thread that there wasn’t any downside in going to UVA. (“40k is a drop in the ocean,” he said, and I do suppose it could be if I become a banker or something.) But I suppose that the circumstances surrounding the career path of a researcher tends to be different from most other college-level jobs?</p>

<p>I definitely plan to correspond with other linguistics researchers. I don;t know what I would be exactly doing for my PhD actually … while I have a good idea of what I work on, I have a vague idea of how it would be accomplished, which I suppose makes all the difference. For example, I don’t know what opportunity will come along for me that will suit both my interests in cognitive science and linguistics (and even bioengineering, if I am so fortunate).</p>

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<p>personally, i don’t think it’s worth it, which is why i’m going to a state school (that gave me mucho merit $) instead of the more “prestigious”, much more expensive private colleges that accepted me. it’s up to you, though…</p>

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<p>I’m trying to do cost/benefit analysis … so, “it’s up to you” isn’t helping me. :(</p>

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<p>ok…look at it this way-college is what you make of it. if you can do the same thing at a college that will put you in $10,000 debt as you can at a college that will leave you in $150,000 debt… I know some people may disagree with me on this point, but i honestly think that what you, personally, do in your time in college is more important than the particular college you attend (btw, sorry if the post is difficult to understand… i’m sleepy :/).</p>