<p>I recently received my financial aid package to the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, my top choice, and was rather disappointed. I will have to take out loans of more than $22,000 a year to be able to attend. Doing some research, I found that the average starting yearly salary for a SFS graduate is about $44,500. </p>
<p>I am completely torn... My back up school is the Honors Program at the University of Georgia, which would only cost me about $10,000 a year, but I really want to get out of the South and into a more international community since I myself am from Eastern Europe.</p>
<p>Can somebody help me out? Do you guys think a Georgetown education is worth $90,000 of debt?</p>
<p>Please don’t load yourself with that kind of debt. There are lots of threads about staggering debt with loans. Read a few.
Go to Georgia for the undergraduate degree and consider Georgetown for grad school.</p>
<p>**
Monthly Loan Payment: $1,130.36**
Number of Payments: 120</p>
<pre><code>Cumulative Payments: $135,643.83
Total Interest Paid: $45,643.83
</code></pre>
<p>Note: The monthly loan payment was calculated at 119 payments of $1,130.36 plus a final payment of $1,130.99.
**
It is estimated that you will need an annual salary of at least $135,643.20 **to be able to afford to repay this loan</p>
<p>Ok…so do you see that you’d have to have an income of over $130k per year to pay off this amount?</p>
<p>I am not convinced that you would have to assume $90,000 in debt over 4 years. Have you calculated in part-time jobs during the year and summer jobs? Also, have you looked at the loan repayment benefits at the U.S. Dept of State and at other institutions that often hire Gtown SFS alumni?</p>
<p>Look at all the possibilities before you just say no.</p>
<p>glido – can you post a link to info on loan repayment benefits for US State Dept employees? I couldn’t find anything other than those related to teaching, military, etc.</p>
<p>*I am not convinced that you would have to assume $90,000 in debt over 4 years. Have you calculated in part-time jobs during the year and summer jobs? *</p>
<p>Well, most kids can only earn their spending money and maybe a few thousand towards their education. At the most, this student “might” be able to shave $16-20k off of the total if he lived very strictly during his college years and worked many hours.</p>
<p>That would still leave him with unmanageable debt. Remember, the OP says that his job will only pay around $45k/yr. That means he should only be borrowing (at most) the max Stafford (about $30k total for 4 years).</p>
<p>It never ceased to amaze me how students who are smart enough to win admission to the most selective universities in the country can nonetheless be so absolutely clueless when it comes to simple questions of finances. I think more time in high school spent on practical math (like how to calculate compounding interest) and less on BC Calculus would make a lot of sense.</p>
<p>What if you won’t cut it to be a foreign service officer? There is a woman at my work place who has a MA in IR from Georgetown. Her job doesn’t require anything in IR. In fact, she could go the local U and get the same job.</p>
<p>He says that UGa will only cost him $10k a year (maybe because of HOPE). So, either he and his family will pay that or he’ll have some debt…but not nearly the Georgetown debt.</p>
<p>Are your parents planning on contributing to your education? If not, GT is not doable. The problem with taking out lots of debt for your dream of studying at the best school for international relations is that 4 years from now, you may not want to go in that field. My husband graduated with a BS in foreign service from GT (same degree as Bill Clinton BTW) only to find out that after 4 years, he didn’t want to do foreign service and now has a PHD in English. Looking back, what he really wanted was to get the heck out of Oklahoma and over-compensated by studying foreign service. Maybe what you want to do is just get the heck out of the South. UGA is a southern oasis and there will be time to get out of the south. But, it won’t happen if your in debt. </p>
<p>DH graduated about 26 years ago with 8-9K in debt but worked very hard summers and work study. Paying off the loans was doable and there is an advantage of the GT name in applying to graduate school.</p>
<p>No, it is not worth that debt. As GTAlum points out postpone your move until after college. You’ll have much more flexibility to move to a different region if you aren’t saddled with a pile of debt.</p>