That amount would still require parental cosigning, which is generally not a good idea.
That amount may be doable to pay back in a reasonable time if you do go into a high paying job at graduation. But if you decide to switch to a lower paying post-graduation destination (including graduate or professional school immediately after graduation), it can be a rather heavy burden.
OP, this is not an easy decision, as much as other people think the decision is obvious (in both directions). Maryland’s honors college is very good, and I know a number of really excellent students who have gone there (many of whom could have gone to more selective schools). While I think Bowdoin would probably be a superior academic experience in many ways, I don’t think choosing Maryland would be giving up an intolerable amount.
It’s really about the amount of debt. 60 grand is still a lot. The financial advisor told you that it’s at the upper limit of what makes sense for your family, and that means there isn’t much margin for some unexpected event like illness, loss of job, or death in the family.
For what it’s worth, Bowdoin is in a small town that’s pretty far from big towns. Maryland is near DC. Lots of people would choose Maryland for that reason alone.
I often take that position that it can be worth it to pay more–even a lot more–for a more selective college. But that’s not the same as borrowing a lot more.
@SaltySpitoon wrote:
So…it sounds like Bowdoin gave you an additional 5k per year in grant money (80k-20k=60k). That’s in addition to how much grant money before you appealed?
Well, you’re not giving us a lot to work with other than your own assertion that you’re not very wealthy. I’d say without more information that even $60k is too much debt relative to what your Bowdoin peers would be paying back after graduation.
OP You may want to check out the recently released 2015 Niche rankings of national liberal arts colleges.
Bowdoin is ranked #1…
But, what is even more interesting for your purposes is there is a stat based on loan default rates of students, and Bowdoin’s is quite low at 1.2%. I don’t know exactly what is behind this statistic (it may be worth investigating), but it suggests to me that Bowdoin students who do incur debt to attend based on the college’s calculation of ECF are quite likely to be in a position to repay it.
The default loan rate is likely so low because despite the top colleges’ attempts to increase diversity the vast majority of the kids attending these schools are at least upper middle class. If they get financial aid, it’s not a huge amount, and can often be well within the limit to pay back quickly. The average Bowdoin grad likely does not have 60K in debt. While that’s a lot better than the original 80K, it’s going to take a long time to pay back.
I would not take out that much debt to go to Bodwoin. I’d go with Northeastern given the scholarship and education quality, in particular the co-ops.
http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=138 indicates that 2013 Bowdoin graduates with debt (31% of total) had an average of $21,292 in debt.
A student with $60,000 of debt at graduation would be an outlier, and much more likely to be in the 1.2% who has trouble paying off the debt. A student with that much debt needs to find a high paying job at graduation; options of lower paying jobs or graduate or professional school become more limited.
For most colleges and universities, the debt levels reported underestimate the true amount of debt for the students’ educations because usually only student federal loans are recorded. Figures for student debt from co-signed private loans usually are not included, and debt that parents took on is not reported at all even if they have a formal agreement that the student will be responsible for that debt.
The numbers in the college data.com pages sometimes do exceed the federal direct loan limits, and a separate line item indicates percentage of parents taking PLUS loans.