<p>What is a reasonable amount of student debt to accrue to finance an undergraduate education? My parents say that they simply cannot afford to pay what FAFSA says they can pay (because of excessive credit card bills). </p>
<p>This is a lot of rounding and generalizing, but basically: my parents were calculated to be able to pay about $24,000; they think they can only pay half of that. Vanderbilts cost-of-attendance is about $48,000. Vanderbilt offered me a grant for about $24,000. </p>
<p>So essentially, I would have to take out loans of about $12,000 per year, or almost $50,000 for the whole four years in order to make up the difference. </p>
<p>Is this a) possible and b) advisable? Will 50,000 in debt from college kill my hopes of attending law school and, um, living above the poverty line at some point after my graduation?</p>
<p>I'm really stressed, because I'd love to go to Vandy; but I'm worried about digging myself into an unreasonable hole of debt (like, alas, my parents already did with credid cards.)</p>
<p>I really have no idea what is reasonable, so please, any advice would be much appreciated!</p>
<p>My parents are strongly advising me against $9000 in loans. That adds up over 4 years. 9000 seems small, but when you figure that's 36,000 with no interest. WOW! :eek: I don't know what to do either.</p>
<p>If you're going to law school, I doubt it would be wise to start out there with an abyss of debt. If I were you, I would consider my other options.</p>
<p>I've been considering a similar path and calculating acceptable debt load. Do you plan on pursuing a high-flying six figure corporate job? If so, paying debt off on 100k (law school debt) would take 5 years to pay off at the 6.75% student loan rate paying something like 2k a month. You can run some calculations with free online tools (yay Google search engine!) to figure out how long you'd be carrying that debt depending on what type of job/salary you plan on earning after law school and/or undergraduate at Vanderbilt. Also, congratulation on getting into a top school!</p>
<p>My mom calculated that a 20,000 dollar debt can be paid off in 3 years. Are you sure you want to go to law school straight away? Because what I'm planning on doing is volunteer abroad for programs like Americorps or Peace Corps because these programs help you pay off your loans, for most of them you can defer payment on your loans when you are serving, and you can get experience. After a year or two abroad, I'll go to graduate school smarter and wiser.</p>
<p>Here's the link to this article:
<a href="http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/CollegeandFamily/Cutcollegecosts/P142701.asp%5B/url%5D">http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/CollegeandFamily/Cutcollegecosts/P142701.asp</a></p>