Hello,
I plan on attending Yale in the fall, with a major in economics. My family qualified for no aid and will be taking out a loan to cover the costs, as they cannot nearly scrape that much money.
Do Ivy League graduates tend to have as hard of a time paying off debt as other private schools? While their debt is usually higher, so is their median salaries out of college. Is it true that ivy league students have less trouble paying off their debts because they are making more money early on?
If you get a high paying job, you won’t have trouble paying off your debt. If you get a lower paying job…you might have more trouble.
Folks graduating from Ivy League schools get all sorts of jobs when they graduate…and some are more high paying than others.
How much in loans will your PARENTS be taking in loans? Or are they making YOU take the loans…and they are cosigning?
Why can’t they help you with college costs? YAle has extremely generous need based aid…even for somewhat high income earners…like families earning almost $200,000 a year get some need based aid.
If your family is getting NO need based aid…they must have. Very high annual income. Is NONE being dedicated to your college costs?
Ok…your other threads indicate that you want to be a political,science major.
Real life examples…we know two poly sci majors who wanted to work in government. Both were thrilled to get jobs as staffers with members of congress at their D.C. Offices. Luckily…neither one had any college debt…because on their about $50,000 a year salary, they were barely able to make rent payments, and pay all of their living expense bills in DC which is a pricey place to,live.
If you are taking out $300,000 in loans to attend Yale for four years…your loan payments will be crippling and will most definitely limit the types of jobs you can consider…and where you can afford to live.
@thumper1 I’m planning on majoring in Economics actually, and am looking more towards the private sector and/or law school
So…how much in undergrad loans do,you plan to take?
And how will you fund law school?
Yikes!!!
Are you saying that your family qualifies for no aid and can’t pay for ANY of your college costs, so they’re going to borrow ALL of the costs and YOU are going to have to pay it all back?
If not, please clarify how much YOU would have to pay back.
And…no…this is a horrible idea…but especially if law school is a possibility.
You got into Yale that gives SUPER aid…and you got none…that means that your parents have a very high income and/or have lots of assets.
What other school is affordable.
If you plan on going to law school, then you are talking about having $500k in debt. Your parents income and assets will be required for need based aid at law school . You are not eligible for need based aid so you would have to borrow to fund this also. It is way too much debt.
Do you have any affordable options?
There are no guarantees with any degree from any college. Period. Are your parents willing to help you pay off some of the debt?
I would caution anyone from borrowing ALL money to attend any expensive school, even an Ivy. That being said, my oldest chose and Ivy. He lessened the cost (and thus loans needed) by doing a few things-
He has a good job lined up and also gotten into a great grad school. The debt is a factor as he is leaning toward the job to pay off the last of his debt, then go to grad school (not sure what he will choose…days to decide). But even so, I think he (who had the ‘Ivy Bug’) would even say it is NOT worth the amount you are taking out if you are literally talking of borrowing, with parents co-signing, the full amount.
By the way our next oldest turned down oldest’s Ivy school and others and took a full ride to a lower ranked school and has been VERY happy. She too, as a big fish in that pond, has had some great opportunities and no financial stress at all. The name is not all that matters. Keep that in mind.
Is Yale that important to you and if so why?
@david_p seems to have made his college choice. And clearly an Ivy League school is the only choice if other threads are any indication of where he applied.
Big question @david_p did your family applynfor need based aid at Yale…or did younjust assume that you wouldn’t get any? Or did you not apply for it because you felt it would,increase your admission chances?
I’m hoping he comes back and says his parents only need to borrow $10,000 a year…or something like that.
I’m hoping he is NOT planning to borrow (with a cosigner) what will definitely be well over $300,000 for Yale undergrad full cost of attendance. It’s a great school…but that is a huge amount of debt.
But at the end of the day…it’s his family choice. Maybe someone else has saved the article about the crippling debt some students have…and it’s in that range…who are still paying off college loans well into their 40’s.
Also, the OP needs to remember that there is a huge surplus of lawyers…and not all get jobs at big paying companies right out of law school. Like anyone else, there could be some lean years.
And on April 9…which wasn’t that long ago…this student was asking about political,science as a major. Now it’s economics. Who knows what it will be by the time he graduates.
I want to know how a family who received NO need based aid from Yale…can’t “scrape together” the cost to attend. Their annual income has to exceed $200,000 a year.
I am of the opinion that IVY league grads are in a better position to handle higher debt because they have a higher potential to have a high starting salary. If you intend to be an econ major then you should understand that your question really is tied to how much you make after graduation. Even a 10K student loan is crushing if you have no job. Having a $50K student loan and working as a quant on wall street is manageable.
Your best bet is to assume you will graduate with an average job and not be exceptional. If the average salary is $60K then plan accordingly. It is best to be conservative when it comes to debt calculations.
Good luck.
Depends on the field. Won’t elaborate right now because class is about to start, and also people get crazy bitey when you imply that Ivy isn’t always King (it isn’t).
But in short:
“I’m hoping he is NOT planning to borrow (with a cosigner) what will definitely be well over $300,000 for Yale undergrad full cost of attendance. It’s a great school…but that is a huge amount of debt.”
OP, if this is the case, please don’t do this. You could graduate in the top paying field out there, and 300k in debt is still a life-ending amount for most people. I have friends in good paying fields with “only” 60-70k in debt at 7%, and have been paying $500/mo for a decade (their minimums apparently), only to find out that principle has done nothing but INCREASE in that time (I guess those payments weren’t even covering interest).
So multiple 60k by 5… multiply those payments by more than 5 because of interest… you’re talking about an unsustainable level of debt regardless of field.
^ That is a reminder for people to pay attention to details. Know the interest rate. Know the amortization schedule - it’s easy to calculate online or excel. How much of that payment is going to principal and how much to interest? What is the effect of $100 extra per month to principal?
The same calculations are helpful to OP. If I borrow X at Y IR, what is the monthly payment on a 10 year schedule?
Any loan that is not subsidized (interest paid during college), instead of just deferred, will be a major issue at those amounts which are already challenging.
$500 monthly payments will pay off $70,000 of principle and 7% interest compounded monthly in 292 payments (a little over 24 years). So they aren’t telling you the whole story.
$300,000 at 7%, paid over 30 years, is almost exactly $2,000 a month.
Still an unsustainable amount of debt, though.
“So they aren’t telling you the whole story.”
Yeah I believe that, just wrote down the details they told me. Still, in their situation, point is life got in the way and resulted in them not being able to pay down 60-70k of debt, let alone 300k of debt.
OP, can you imagine paying 2,000 A MONTH for about double your lifetime? That’s what that level of debt is.
am of the opinion that IVY league grads are in a better position to handle higher debt because they have a higher potential to have a high starting salary.
[/QUOTE]
Do you care to quantify that and provide some specifics/evidence? This student is considering law school ($300k more debt).
It’s one thing to say that if you mean that perhaps an ivy grad headed into a well-paying job could handle $60k of debt…but really, how can you say that an 18 year old can handle $200k of debt when you have no idea what he’d be paid when he’s employed.
Do you realize that many ivy grads just have $50k-100k salaries for a very long time?
There was a good blog post about 2-3 years ago when I was applying to MIT, on the MIT student blogs. It was one of the rare posts from an alumni, maybe a decade back if I’m remembering correctly. She described how some difficult life factors (I forget specifics now) prevented her from really using her degree to its full effectiveness: she was even homeless at one point/couchsurfing. IIRC she described working a 25-35k/yr tech writing or something job, and also remarked on other friends in her class who got just regular/moderate-paying jobs after graduating.
A lot of people look at top undergrad educations as a golden ticket: but it’s not. Life still gets in the way for people. Salaries may be higher on average due to skew in different fields, etc, but it’s not a guarantee. Not a golden ticket. Not a good assumption to make to justify very high levels of debt.
^^^
True…there have been posts on CC from parents with very modest or strong-but-not-high incomes who are ivy grads.
Seriously, many here work with ivy grads and they’re paid the same as the rest of the folks. There isn’t an Ivy-Salary-Bonus on people’s paychecks.
As I’ve mentioned many times elsewhere, I work alongside a lot of students from tippy top schools at my internships. They have NEVER made more than me (for better or worse, kids always compare – I’ve had roommates from Stanford, MIT, Georgia Tech, and others, and we have ALWAYS made the same $). We have always made the same base salary, and sign-on bonuses/stock options etc are adjusted based on whether or not you have other offers in hand, not what school you’re from.
This is also true for full time offers at ALL the companies I’ve worked for. Not saying it’s true at every single workplace ever, but all the top companies in my field (software engineering) except for the wall street companies do it this way.
Mileage will vary by field, though. But I highly doubt many fields pay kids from more than kids from . That’s just a weird thing to do and I think it’s mostly a myth.