Don’t worry about private loans. Private lenders do care that you pay them back and do do a credit worthiness check, loan to income ratio,. You won’t qualify unless you have the income to repay so they won’t even be a temptation.
If you are current on your student loans, it won’t change your cedit score, but lenders can see that amount of debt sitting there. It can affect your ability to get a loan for a car, house or other need. Employers, including the government, can pull a credit check and see how much debt you have. Employers, even those nice governments you want to work for, can decide they don’t want employees who are burdened with twice their salaries in non-housing debt. As others have said, there are plans that go wrong like government RIFs, agency closures, budget cuts. And the entire debt forgiveness program can change. I think the proposal was to cap the program at $55k, but you’ll be way over that.
If you are talking about loan forgiveness for your daughter, it will only cover her federal loans. Loan forgiveness for you will only cover you federal loans. Private loans and parent loans are not covered in the loan forgiveness program.
[quote=Public Service Loan forgiveness]
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program forgives** the remaining balance on your Direct Loans after you have made 120 qualifying monthly payments under a qualifying repayment plan while working full-time for a qualifying employer. **
No, she’s saying she is taking out Parent Plus loans, and she (parent) will be able to work a qualified job and make the payments and have them forgiven. I agree with her that it can work, I just disagree that it will work or that one should go into the loans knowing that one can’t pay them back.
If the school is such a perfect fit, that would make it particularly painful to risk her having to withdraw after two years or so because it just wasn’t affordable anymore. Would it be possible for her to postpone for a year, do a gap year (working to make money?), and in the interim, find some similar schools with a reputation for offering better merit / grant packages? Then she’d still have the school you both love as an 80k+ loan option, while also also hopefully having some additional choices … including, I’d say, an in-state financial safety or two …
Parent plus loans are not eligible for IBR or PAYE
So by the time you make 10 years of loan repayments of the plus loans there will be very little or anything to forgive.
There are over 3000 colleges in the country. There is more than one perfect fit school. I think that you should try really hard to help your daughter with an affordable option.
A college that wants 19K from a 20K-income family is NOT perfect. It is, in fact, horrible, because it dangles the tempting prize but places it just out of reach so that it hurts no matter what.
Lower income students must ALWAYS apply to many colleges, so that they can compare packages.
And colleges that meet 100% need for low income students had deadlines that are now long past.
What State do you live in? What are your daughter’s stats?
A gap year might be the best solution. Even if she takes on some loans next year, she’ll have choices.
There are thousands of colleges in the US. There will be several that are perfect for your daughter but won’t cause financial collapse and jeopardize your ability to get a government job (because heavy debt CAN be held against you for some jobs,since it makes you easier to “pressure” from outside sources.)
Perhaps she can find something from this list although I would double check every school before wasting money on an application. Some are still accepting students and maybe talk to FA before she even applies.
I also feel that a college that does not meet full need, with such a large gap, is often not a particularly high ranking college, so it is unlikely high paying employers will be recruiting there. You would be better off seeing what you can do locally publicly. For example in New York something like City College which is affordable.
I knew a kid who went to an expensive private. Everything was ok until superstorm Sandy, He is now working at his place of worship and attending community college and living at home.
I have a sibling who was furloughed when the government was shut down.
No paycheck.
I have another relative who was in a role considered critical to the government’s functioning- so the paychecks continued, but all mandatory travel (airplane tickets, hotel, meals) had to go on a personal credit card and were not reimbursed until 6 months after the government resumed funding. A terrible catch 22- if you didn’t get on the plane you’d lose your job; if you got on the plane, you were just increasing your debt load, to be paid back at some uncertain future date.
How are you going to handle your cash flow the next time a renegade member of Congress decides to shut down the government to prove a point? You are likely to be in category 1- a microbiologist for the CDC or FDA is likely to be in a role considered not mission critical (i.e. not law enforcement or judicial).
And I hate to be a snob… but Adelphi? Really?
And you do understand that ANY government job for you that requires a background check is going to do a credit check as well and you could be denied…
If you are a single parent making 20k, living in NYS your daughter is eligible for an opportunity program (EOP @ SUNY, HEOP @ NYS schools). Adelphi is an HEOP school. If she were that perfect to them, they would have asked her to apply to their HEOP program where if accepted, she would have received a financial aid package that met her full need. If she were to decide to attend grad school after graduating from an opportunity program, through the graduate opportunity program she would get free graduate tuition at any NYS public university. You only get one shot at being admitted to an opportunity program; that is as a first time freshman.
However, once you are in you can transfer to other opportunity programs, whether it is at SEEK @ CUNY, HEOP @SUNY or one of the 64 HEOP schools in NYS.
I think she should take a gap year regroup and make a new list including schools where she would be a viable candidate for an opportunity program
^ Great point.
That makes the gap year even more important.
EOP/HEOP is definitely the way to go for your daughter.
She gets ONE shot at excellent financial aid. She shouldn’t
blow it on Adelphi (please understand that this amount of debt
is likely to jeopardize clearance for many positions you’d be
eligible for, so it’d bankrupt both of you.)
if you have to pay almost 19k, the perfection and the love your daughter feels for this school is unrequited, because it did not look that they showed her any love.
the bulk of her financial aid package probably consists of what she would have gotten at any school in NYS:
Pell $5815
Tap $5165
Sub loan $3500
Unsub loan $2000
Your D needs to go to CC or an affordable school that doesn’t require Parent Plus loans.
A school where costs can be covered with Pell, direct student loan and summer work earnings.
So around $14,000. Either a school she can commute to or one where tuition is covered by merit so Pell and loan can pay for room and board.
Are you going to keep your current $20k a year job while in grad school?
You don’t know where you are going to live if you work for the government once you finish grad school.
What if you have to move to a different state?
Your D’s residency is dependent on your residency. If she starts college here and then you move she might be considered an out of state student at her current school.
There are lots of things to consider and since you already have student debt and plan on grad school debt, adding any more loans like Plus loans is not wise.
There will be LOTS of excellent colleges through EOP/HEOP for her, depending on her stats. NYS is great for that. HEOP/EOP is competitive so it’s important to apply to many colleges.
Does your D’s high school look out for opportunities for low income students? It seems she was not well advised at all, applying to only one school that is unaffordable.
Can we run this list against schools still accepting apps? Then from that result (if any), which is most similar to Adelphi?
Amherst College (MA)
Barnard College (NY)
Bates College (ME)
Boston College (MA)
Brown University (RI)
Bryn Mawr College (PA)
Bowdoin College (ME)
Bucknell University (PA)
California Institute of Technology
Carleton College (MN)
Claremont McKenna College (CA)
Clark University (MA)
Colby College (ME)
Colgate University (NY)
College of the Holy Cross (MA)
College of Wooster (OH)
Colorado College (CO)
Columbia University (NY)
Connecticut College (CT)
Cornell University (NY)
Davidson College (NC)
Denison University (OH)
Dickinson College (PA)
Duke University (NC)
Dartmouth College (NH)
Emory University (GA)
Franklin and Marshall College (PA)
Franklin W. Olin College
Georgetown University (DC)
Gettysburg College (PA)
Grinnell College (IA)
Hamilton College (NY)
Harvey Mudd College (CA)
Haverford College (PA)
Harvard University (MA)
Johns Hopkins University (MD)
Kenyon College (OH)
Lafayette College (PA)
Lehigh University (PA)
Macalester College (MN)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MA)
Middlebury College (VT)
Mount Holyoke College (MA)
Northwestern University (IL)
Oberlin College (OH)
Occidental College (CA)
Pitzer College (CA)
Pomona College (CA)
Princeton University (NJ)
Reed College (OR)
Rice University (TX)
Saint John’s College (NM)
Saint Olaf College (MN)
Scripps College (CA)
Sewanee: The University of the South (TN)
Smith College (MA)
Stanford University (CA)
Swarthmore College (NY)
Thomas Aquinas College (CA)
Trinity College (CT)
Tufts University (MA)
Tulane University (LA)
Union College (NY)
University of Chicago (IL)
University of Notre Dame (IN)
University of Pennsylvania (PA)
University of Richmond (VA)
University of Rochester (NY)
University of Southern California
Vanderbilt University (TN)
Vassar College (NY)
Wabash College (IN)
Wake Forest University (NC)
Washington and Lee University (VA)
Washington University, St. Louis, (MO)
Wellesley College (MA)
Wesleyan University (MA)
Williams College (MA)
Wheaton College (MA)
Yale University (CT)
Many of the schools that meet 100% demonstrated need are not taking applications at this time (Ivy day is in 2 days, then pretty much every school on their list will be sending admissions decisions out to their students).
The NACAC list of schools still accepting applications will not be out until May. Op’s best option for getting an affordable option is to apply to SUN, which has rolling admissions, she may still be able to get into a HEOP program (if she lives in the city, it will be too late for her to get a seat at a 4 year CUNY, she would have to wait for on-the spot admissions at the 2-year CUNYs, which happens lat spring/early summer). If she applies to a school outside of NYS at this time, she will lose her 5165 in state aid.