The merit of Penn is not the issue.
The huge debt is.
And btw, I have several good friends with degrees from Harvard.
They just have regular jobs, would have taken them decades to pay off a huge college debt.
The real issue is why college costs so much, it is heart breaking to see so many kinds saddled with crippling debt.
I am in the mental health field, I see the damage this causes to them. They really struggle for a long time.
Take Wharton, you can’t go wrong there. Do well and you’ll almost automatically get paid big money. Some companies may even pay off some of your debt
Owing one’s parents money not at all like owing a bank money. For starters, it will not affect a person’s credit rating. Plus, it is much easier to negotiate lower payments, for example, and this loan would be “interest free.” Not only that, I suspect that if these parents are actually wealthy (which is likely, given the lack of aid from Penn), then it is possible that they will eventually simply give that money to the student.
I doubt that many Wharton grads are working at ordinary jobs. At least not at ordinary salaries.
If the student wants an ordinary job, then OSU is the better choice. But if he is truly ambitious then Wharton is definitely worth considering. If the parents actually are willing to loan the student over $200,000 then they probably know what they are doing. This is not like taking out normal student loans.
I doubt that all Wharton grads (we’re talking undergrad business, right?) land the kind of job right out of school that pays enough to repay $250K in a “few years”–a decade maybe? One of the hidden costs of getting these high-profile jobs you describe is that they’re all located in places with some of the highest costs of living in the US. That somewhat tempers the higher salaries.
Huh? I don’t understand where you’re getting this. No one here is advising the OP to be “disingenuous” about his loan. They’re simply pointing out that borrowing from your parents is very different from borrowing from a bank. Your parents are apt to be understanding if you miss a payment, or if you have to defer paying them back for a few years while you find your footing. The bank is not understanding. Also, the fact that his parents aren’t charging him interest is a bonus.
If anything, it’s disingenuous and strawmannish to depict the pro-Penn people here as advising the OP to “defraud” his parents.
It is indeed sad that his parents don’t see the value of this degree, and aren’t willing to help him pay for college though they seem to have the money, but no one here has advised him to “defraud” them.
First of all, Philadelphia isn’t that expensive. I live there right now. It’s not dirt cheap, but it’s not New York.
Second of all, high-profile jobs are located in expensive cities because they are high-profile jobs. There are few high-profile jobs in a place like Ohio, and this is why the real estate is cheap. So yes, if you want to be someone and have a successful career, you need to be in one of the nation’s financial centers. You want to live somewhere nice, somewhere with opportunities? Welcome to a higher cost of living. The OP has a better shot of landing such a job and paying off his loans if he goes to Wharton and has connections in those financial centers in the first place. If he goes to Fisher, he may not owe as much money (though he’ll still owe $60k–too much for an OSU degree, IMO), but he also won’t have as much of a shot as those coveted positions on the east coast.
Third, a Penn degree is the gift that will keep on giving. I think a lot of people here lack the ability to see the long game. They think that if the OP fails to pay his parents off in two years then he will have lost any claim to success. That’s BS. With a degree from Penn, he’ll have a much better shot at success for the rest of his life. Believe me, there are perks to being at Penn, and those perks don’t go away as you age.
Ran out of room … Continued below …
Personally, I think the OP’s major mistake was not applying to a wider range of schools so he didn’t have to come down to the stark and dramatic choice of Penn vs. OSU. Selective SLACs–what the NSF calls the “Oberlin 50”–actually have a great track record of preparing students for careers in science and math. I’m guessing that a school like Bucknell or Haverford would have offered the OP some scholarship money, and their alumni networks and prestige are also a powerful currency. I think that’s the lesson here–don’t put all your eggs in the Penn or OSU basket, because neither feel obligated to offer wealthy students any money.
Haverford, like most hyper-selective LACs, offers no merit aid.
I stand by my statements.
Some of the posters on this board and others have given advised
this OP to negotiate a huge loan in bad faith.
Then find a school that does and apply there. Oberlin still offers merit scholarships–especially to students who are National Merit Finalists. The point is that your only options in this world aren’t an Ivy League school vs. a large public.
The discussion here assumes that an UG from Fisher is a terminal degree. Why not consider doing an UG from OSU in Financial Math? The sequence of courses seem quite tailored for Finance. OP may investigate the departmental offerings further.
http://math.osu.edu/undergrad/majors/math-track/financial
If OP does well academically (very likely), he might be sponsored by OSU for various prestigious scholarships (Rhodes,…). With the money saved in the UG, he will be better off doing a masters in Financial engineering or applied (financial) math from some of the best schools in the world, including Wharton.
The downside is that 4 years is a long stretch of time (especially when one is in late teens), and what if things don’t go as planned?
It’s more difficult to get into a really prestigious graduate program if you don’t come from a prestigious school. It’s also more difficult to get a Rhodes scholarship if you come from a large public. (It might not be fair–but it’s the case in this situation. Penn produced 6 Rhodes scholars in the past 10 years; OSU produced 2 in the last 30. Is this because Penn students are just brighter? Who knows. It’s possible, but I’m guessing it has more to do with Penn’s name recognition, and also with the fact that Penn probably has people on hand who can help grads write a more convincing Rhodes application.)
However, the OP isn’t really thinking about grad school as much as this current opportunity. In terms of coming out of school and working right away–the Penn degree will probably help with immediate employability.
I do hope that the OP checks back in with what they decided to do.
UPenn puts you in a whole other league socially and financially.
And I want to ask as well. UPenn makes sure that any student that gets accepted is able to meet tuition cost, so, if you truly can’t meet the cost, it shouldn’t be a problem. Why does a family that has the cash to pay out $240 K in four years, not want to fund even a small portion of your school costs?
For the record, I was accepted to eight schools total - Cincinnati, UT Austin, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Penn, OSU, Georgia Tech, and Vanderbilt - but I had it narrowed down to OSU and Penn.
I have thought long and hard over the decision, and I have chosen the University of Pennsylvania! Thanks for all your advice guys!
“it is more difficult to get into a really prestigious program if you don’t come from a prestigious school”. For MBA it is not true. By the way, OSU has
Congratulations. Pl. disregard the above comment, which seemed to have been in response to an earlier post.