<p>I am thrilled to be accepted to Rice, but am disappointed with my aid offer. My interest is economics with a minor in statistic or accounting. Currently I am interested in law school.</p>
<p>The choice I face is whether I should attend a public university at the cost of 4,000/year or Rice at 18,000/year (BTW my family's annual income is about 79,000). Attending Rice means that when I graduate I will have 40,000 in debt, while at the public university I will graduate debt free.</p>
<p>As law school is something I'm thinking about, I was wondering if the debt of Rice will hold me back from being able to bear the costs of law school. On the other hand, will graduating from a 'unranked' public university make admission to a top law school near impossible.</p>
<p>I'm quite frusterated and don't know how to make a decision. Any advice or experience you could share would be appreciated!</p>
<p>If you are thinking of going to graduate school, it is usually best trying to graduate debt free. It looks like if you go to the public, you will actually graduate with money in your pocket instead of in debt. You should be fine if you do well on the LSAT in getting into law school if you go to the public.</p>
<p>I don’t know…the way I look at it many people would have no problem forking $40K over for a nice car that will depreciate in value to the point it’s worthless, while you can fork out the same for an education at a university that is Top 20 ranked and no one can take that away from you. I guess the bottom line would be if you could sleep at night knowing you would be incurring that debt? If not, then go with UTD.</p>
<p>I’d graduate Rice with 33k in personal debt but I’m still choosing it over schools that are giving me better offers. With an aspiration to go to law school, I wouldn’t stress too much about paying off your debt in the near future.</p>
<p>@FutureDocSauve - Graduating free of debt is very attractive to me (the cost of college is my responsibility, not my parents). But is doing well on the LSAT the primary factor for admission to law school? Will going to UTD limit my options for law school? Those are points I’m still debating.</p>
<p>@franko5150 - If my family was forking over 40K for a car, Rice wouldn’t be a financial challenge (also my EFC would probably be higher ;).</p>
<p>I am in a similar situation. I really like to attend Rice. But my FA package calls for twice the cost of attending UCLA. Will be in math and finance major. Any advice to help make the decision.</p>
<p>If a particular school is a financial hardship and another school isn’t, then the logical choice is to choose the one that you and your family can afford. Basically anything over 20k in loans is too much and will be extremely difficult to deal with, especially since you have to start paying quite soon after leaving school.</p>
<p>The bottom line is how good of a student will you be? You can go to Harvard and make Ds and when you compete against someone from State U who made As and was involved in internships and research, etc… the person from State U is going to win. Now, yes, if you go to Harvard and make As and do internships and research and get great recommendations (key!), then yes, you will win over the State U person.</p>