<p>@mom2collegekids I’m sorry, I was immature and I regret posting that</p>
<p>@everyone I will be staying at my current university unless something miraculous happens when my mom calls Fin Aid tomorrow (which she insists on doing). I have decided. Thanks for your insight.</p>
<p>Chemistry…make the most of wherever you continue towards your degree.</p>
<p>No problem…I know that these are stressful times.</p>
<p>however, if your parents insist that you go to Cornell, only do so if they alone will sign all these extra loans…even the ones next year and so forth. If they wont agree to be single-signers, then you cant trust the situation.</p>
<p>did you run the NCP again and put 2 in college to see future results?</p>
<p>I ask this because a couple years ago, a cornell mom was upset that even when the 2nd child got accepted, hey werent given much aid</p>
<p>@mom2collegekids Yeah, I did. It didn’t look too bad. EFC went from ~67k to ~38k. But I didn’t remember my parent’s exact income so it may be a little inaccurate. But the reason why I’ve made my decision is that I just learned my parents probably won’t be able to take out a huge loan because of their past financial history. </p>
<p>If your parents donate 20% each year to charity, church, whatever, that’s $40K right there. They can pay $10K towards college, that’s $ leaving you with about $15K that you need to come up with if they decide to give you the money instead. You can borrow $6500 right off the bat, and Cornell probably will come up with a bit more that you could borrow, as they do have such a fund. So say, you borrow $10k and you work part time and in the summers for the rest. </p>
<p>The other thing is if your parents are willing and able to borrow the entire amount, there is PLUS which makes it easy for them to do so, and the repayment schedules are flexible though the interest rate is high. But this is something THEY need to consider and make the decision, not you. It’s not a good thing if they borrow on the expectation that you will be paying it back. Very bad idea, very bad thinking. But if THEY can manage this, a whole other story.</p>
<p>Um…does the amount they donate to charity reduce their AGI or their taxable income…I forget. </p>
<p>Chemistryking, if you are strong enough of a student to get into Cornell, you will likely be a good prospect for a good MBA program where you WILL be given opportunity to borrow for the cost. The reason is very simple for the availability of funds then, and not now. The ROI that the lenders get are a lot higher, more probable at that level. The chances of you getting a high paying Wall STreet job with an ug degree are not good. Even from an Ivy League school. My DH hires a lot of such kids. Many of them go on to get their MBAs as they seen the possibilities that way are a lot better. MBAs from top schools have a high return, no question about it.</p>
<p>The problem is that if you manage to get your parents to borrow all that money, if you are on the hook for it, AND then you decide at the much older, wiser and experienced age of being in your mid 20s, say, that you should go for a MBA, you are in so much debt if you are helping your parents repay that loan they took out for you, and all fo the money you borrowed for under grad. The nice thing about being loan free or have low loan amounts from those undergrad years is that when you are better able to gage where you should go, what you should do for a career, you have the flexibility to do it. Right now you are loan free? Or close to it? You graduate that way you will have a lot more options than if you borrow into the 6 figures or have your parents do so with the understanding you are paying back the loans.</p>
<p>OP, back at the very beginning of this thread you stated:</p>
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<p>I’m not sure how you determined that. If you get good grades, know how to network, learn how to interview very well and are aggressive you can break into a small advisory firm or potentially a larger one. In the right firm, your experience could be very similar to analysts at the BB. Feeder schools are not absolutely necessary to break into IB.</p>
<p>One more thing. If you don’t have good grades and interview skills coming out of a feeder school you still probably won’t be able to land a choice IB analyst position.</p>
<p>Dont you need a grad degree? My cousin’s son is in investment banking on wall st for GS. He seemed to need a grad degree.</p>
<p>anyway…now that you realize that your parents finances (credit?) will likely mean not qualifying this year (or worse, next year!), you are wise not to go as an undergrad.</p>
<p>do your best and apply to good grad schools. what is your home state?</p>
<p>There are plenty of folks working at IB firms with a bachelors degree.</p>
<p>Yes, analyst-level are mostly undergrads.</p>
<p>I think it’s a shame if you can’t go to Cornell AEM. As for the $40K donation reducing taxes, yes . . . but even if taxes take a chunk out of that $40K, they’d have $25K leftover if that money didn’t go to the church and went to your education instead. Stuff just doesn’t add up when it comes to your parents’ finances. No private school for your sibling, right? Any debts they have to pay off (but then, the financial aid office doesn’t take that in to consideration)?</p>
<p>You really need to be straight with your parents and get them to lay the numbers on the table. Cash flow coming in. Cash flow going out. Nobody here knows who you are, and I’m curious, but even if you don’t share the details with us, you need to find out what the deal is with your parents’ finances. Especially if you’re going in to finance, you need to be a bit more worldly. Find out about credit card spending, etc.</p>
<p>See if they can save some (at >$200K coming in, they should be able to) and if Cornell is willing to grant a deferral.</p>
<p>I had the same thought about the 20% of income going to church tithes. </p>
<p>OP, I really feel for you. I’m sorry you are unhappy at your current school. I have to ask, surely there’s a middle ground – both academically and financially – between your current cost-free but disappointing school, and Cornell? Anywhere else you could apply to as a transfer (not for next year but as a 3rd year) that would be cheaper than Cornell but still give you a better education and a better social experience than where you are now?</p>
<p>If the parents insist on Cornell, then they need to take a break from some of that church-giving. I am not aware of a church that expects 15-20% of gross. (and I would seriously wonder about any institution that would not allow a family to back-off while trying to pay for college.)</p>
<p>They wont qualify for a loan, but they can use the school’s no-interest payment plan…but THEY will have to make the payments…which they could likely afford if they back-off on some of that tithing.</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that if a family makes $200K a year, even reducing income to $!50K is still not going to bring much, if any fin aid to the table. Families at that income range with one in college are still expected to pay pretty much the full freight at that level Get some loan subsidy and the fin aid is taken care of. There are also very good reasons, personal reasons why a family makes the decision to tithe and more.</p>
<p>It’s very easy to slip and slide into a higher level of living as you make more money. I never thought we’d be making this kind of money, and I’d have thought we’d have money to donate to all kinds of things, live like kings and even have money to burn at what we make. But I did not take into account the obligations that come with commitments one makes with a higher income. A bigger house means more fixed costs associated with it, for instance, in utilities. Local proprety taxes, maintenance of a house to the standards of the neighborhood all add up. We could take care of property in the midwest ourselves. We have a lawn service here. The cost of replacement parts and any such services in a more upscale neighborhood can be more. And then you also fall into a routine that just costs more than you would if you could not, and then you begin thinking it’s an entitlement.</p>
<p>My one son took a job in midtown which was a highly desired position with just a small premium in pay over what he was doing in what many would consider stop gap employment. He had to wear coat and tie and look good, had to take the train into the city, and it behooved him to hobknob with other after work. Noone packs lunch in his office and he got into the habit of picking up Mocha drink and bagel as most everyone else does at his office. It didn’t take long for him to figure out that he was spending far, far more than what his increase in pay was. He still had his car and needed it to get around in the suburbs. Housing in Manhattan was prohibitive. He and some others at the firm came to the conclusion that they were living at subsistence level after one took out the absolutely necessary expenses and the discretionary ones that many in their situation indulged in. Yet to take those discretionary expenses out, meant lost opportunities for work and also that was what he wanted to do as a young person in Manhattan.</p>
<p>And so it is with every stage in life. When you get your Wall Street job, it’s highly likely you find it doesn’t pay nearly enough even with NO debt, as my son has. We paid for his ug education so he has NO loan payments. We helped him get his car so NO payments there. Even then, it’s a rough go, as you consider yourself among your peers and he’s finding out as are my other son’s that even when you are on your own, you parents’ financials and what they are willing to subsidize of yours makes a huge difference in quality of life. My son makes more than a kid who lives in a great one bedroom in prime real estate in Manhattan. His parents still pick up all his expenses so his paycheck is just for personal spending. And the kid is not unusual in this crowd. You also find that it’s not the schools that dictate getting some of the plum jobs but who you know that can get you to the front of the line for consideration for them. Friend of DH is hiring his son and his son’s roommate at $30 an hour this summer tof an internship at his company. These are kids at non flagship state schools with mediocre gpas who would not get their feet in the door at any such firm without the connection, nor are they likely to get that much in pay. And the mom in the situation is bewailing that the commute is so long and the train pass is so expensive for her son as is the cost of working in Manhattan so that he is unlikely to have much left for college expenses. My son is working at $8 an hour these days and glad to have his job and has to be on the ball to get 30 hours of work in his “internship”. </p>
<p>I’m going OT here, but I want the OP to understand that it’s easy to spend up any amount of money when you don’t have a directed cause that you focus upon. Clearly college was not one of those expenses your parents put on their list. Or they’d have been putting money towards it as soon as they were making any extra money. As they bought their house, they’d have looked for someething less expensive so that they could put that much more into the college fund. And you would have likely heard harping about saving every nickel for college on your part. Yes, my parents were always reminding me to put half of anything I got away for college and my brothers too. Made a nice difference right there and they were doing the same. But they did not live in upper middle class neighborhoods and their homes were very modest. </p>
<p>Have the conversation with your parents. in particular can they use most of the tithing for AEM. Also contact Cornell immediately to see if you could defer for a year and what the conditions would be. </p>
<p>To answer the thread’s title question? Anything over 100-125k is a bit too much. </p>
<p>Even if you go to Cornell, you’re still going to have shaky job prospects after graduation. Provided you get lucky and snag an analyst internship, which with some luck becomes a full time job after college (probably in NYC), then you’ll be making (if you’re lucky) in the 75th percentile for I-Bankers (122k/year). Keep in mind that this involves ~80-90 hours a week (associate) to 100 hours a week (analyst). Let’s also assume you get lucky and get a ~40k bonus (in this economy). Living in NYC (wall street hopeful), that 160k turns into ~96k after taxes. You’re taking home 8k per month. For a 125k loan, you’re paying $3000 per month (if you want to get out within 5 years so you can build a life without this crushing student debt). Living in NYC (as a professional) at 5k per month (if you’re lucky) is quite difficult (think of the conveniences you’ll be paying for: dry cleaning, dinners, hailing a cab, etc–I mean, after a 12 workday, do you want to go home to Ramen or are you going to go out for a nice dinner?) It’s hard to live like a college student as a professional. And remember, this is based on the assumption that you get the lucky and get all the best opportunities. </p>
<p>Are you feeling lucky?</p>
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<p>anything over $40k is too much.</p>
<p>Another option to the OP is to stay where you are, kick ass on the GPA, get your parents to save up $60K or so, then go for a 1-year masters at an elite school where Wall Street recruits. The companies who come to recruit undergrads for analyst positions will look at Masters students as well. Also consider a 1-year Masters at Columbia or NYU (where you get recruiting and benefit from being close, allowing for more networking opportunities). </p>
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I don’t think the parents should be responsible for your Master degree.</p>