My daughter goes to Florida Tech and I always have to explain to people where it is and what it’s about. When I’m in Colorado I usually say “It’s sort of like Mines, but for NASA and aerospace and not petroleum and mining.” They get that it is a specialty engineering school. And then I have to explain that it is not a public school but a private school even though it has ‘Florida’ in it, “sort of like Cal Tech and MIT” but of course NOT as ranked as Cal Tech and MIT, more like IIT!
But I don’t have to say that to people who work at Martin Marietta or Lockheed Martin. They already know. That’s what I meant about employers knowing the school. Colorado employers know the tech schools. Joe Schmo won’t know it, but who cares about Joe? He’s not going to hire you.
You might not have to take out that much in loans. The school add things like transportation and personal expense into their COA. Those are cost that you can control. So you might be able to cut back somewhere to knock out the plus loan.
My daughter attends IIT. She will be a third year student this fall. She had three internship offers this summer (one on the west coast) and the one she accepted covered her summer living expenses and allowed her to save a good chunk of money. She has another part time internship lined up for fall. She also had an on campus job last year. Attending IIT has already given her some great opportunities.
I will second the suggestion to get over to Career services first thing and get to work on your resume. Keep it updated and keep revising it to make it better. Visit the career fair (they offer a “tour” of the career fair for new students who want to see how one works). There’s plenty of help for you, so take advantage of it. Join some clubs, get involved. Keep your grades up. Your IPRO courses will be a great opportunity to show what you can do as part of a team, and can give you some excellent leadership skills and talking points for interviews. You have a great opportunity to get an excellent education and you may be able to keep the loans down by working.
If you find that you do need more loan money, your mother can apply for a PLUS loan for that amount. If she is denied, you will be able to borrow up to $4000 - and of course you aren’t required to borrow that whole amount! You could just borrow what you needed.