Options for continuing education with inability to take out loans

Paying for College
1

<p>For my first year at community college I was short ~$600 since financial aid didn't cover all my expenses, so when I went to multiple banks to see if I could take out a loan, they all labelled me as a credit liability because I didn't have any credit nor a job at the time. I had to borrow the money from a rather well-off acquaintance and he jokingly told me to pay him back when I finished my PhD because he knows I studied hard to go back to school.</p>

<p>Next year, if I get approximately the same amount of aid as the previous year, worst case scenario I will have to get extremely lucky in finding a job (considering I could not find a job for months before I started school) for several weeks just enough to pay the tuition and then quit the job afterwards. Or I can give up my summer research opportunity and sacrifice polishing up my academic resume for transferring to a 4-year school and just find work to pay off my second year of community college.</p>

<p>I didn't think I'd have to worry about this until it came to it, but it's been concerning me for a while now...if I cannot get the money up front for even a relatively inexpensive 4-year school and financial aid will not cover me, I guess that means I cannot go to school at all until I search for jobs and work for the next several years (before I began community college, I had been looking for a job for more than half a year before I had enough and decided I needed to go back to school for an advanced degree so I could stabilize my situation better).</p>

<p>If I do choose to save up money for college, I will probably have to flip burgers for the next decade or so just to obtain a bachelor's degree, and I don't know how detrimental that will look on my application for graduate school. I will have to find an apartment and pay rent, because the last time I tried to get a job without a residence, I had a very difficult time trying to communicate with the hiring manager and attempting to get him to accodomate to my situation but he could not help due to certain rules. Which means if I want to save money, I will have to go back to living to dangerous parts of town since those are the only areas where rent is cheap and I'd really prefer not to. Even then, it'll take at least 10 years to save up for the 2 more years of college I need (on minimum wage).</p>

<p>I've also considered working while studying, but the thing is that I am not the sharpest tool in the shed so I am already putting in well between 75-100 hours per week for studies just to maintain a less-than-perfect grades, and I'm afraid if I get a full-time job, my grades will drop tremendously and I won't be accepted into any graduate schools at all, and who knows what I can do an undergraduate Physics degree.</p>

<p>For example:
If a school costs about a reasonable $20,000/year, and financial aid covers maybe half of that (I don't know how accurate that is, but the calculation of the estimates on the FAFSA site always seem wrong), I still need to come up with $5,000 per semester and on minimum wage that's approximately 700 hours of work per semester, which is a full-time 40 hours/week in a single semester (given 16 weeks in a semester).</p>

<p>If the school will somehow allow me to take courses while I pay off the semester, I will have to work full-time whilst studying, but if they won't let me in before paying the full cost of attendance first, I'm wondering if there's anything else I can do.</p>

<p>I can only imagine if I actually get into a decent undergraduate school for Physics, I'm sure it'll cost probably twice as much, which I don't mind if it all goes to debt, but if I can't find money to borrow to go into debt that'll be an issue and I don't know if I have the patience to flip burgers for 10 years just to get a start in a proper career.</p>

<p>So my question is for those of you who got through college on your own without any support...how were you able to maintain a high GPA and get into a good graduate school (particularly for the hard sciences)? I don't see too many options right now. If I could just somehow get the loans, I wouldn't even mind being in debt, even if it was a terrible interest rate. I'm confident that I'll be able to get a decent-paying job post-graduate school with a Physics PhD, especially from a brand name school, and if I can comfortably live on $10k/yr (as I've done for the past several years), then I think I'll do just fine if I can just finish school somehow.</p>

2

<p>How much does your community college cost?</p>

<p>Are your parents in the picture as far as financially helping out?</p>

<p>Most schools have tuition payment plans that allow you to pay in installments over the course of a semester. That way, you could pay those bills while working.</p>

<p>You will need to look for the most affordable schools - stay at an in-state public college.</p>

<p>The fact is that you cannot borrow more than $7,500 in federal guaranteed loans per year for college. That is your budget, full stop - nobody is going to loan you more money, as you have found out. So you need to work within those parameters.</p>

3

<p>With the tuition and fees, it costs $2,200 per semester. I got about $1,900 from FAFSA and didn’t get any other aid and wasn’t eligible for any of the scholarships offered by the school. But they only offer a 2-year degree here so I need to transfer to a 4-year college soon.</p>

<p>No, I haven’t been in contact with my parents for some years now.</p>

<p>The tuition payment plans allowing me to pay in installments sound very nice. My community college does not have that option. They told me I must drop my classes if I cannot pay tuition up front before the semester, period. So I was under the impression that all schools were like that, and I am glad that isn’t the case.</p>

<p>Is there any way I can raise my credit in order to take out more loans? Maybe I can obtain a credit card or several and use those to pay the tuition?</p>

<p>There aren’t many public schools in my state that are too good for my field of studies (referring to research opportunities and funding from labs/government for certain sciences, which means nothing to show for on my graduate school application).</p>

4

<p>Matheo,</p>

<p>was $1900 a Pell Grant or Direct Loan? If it was a Pell Grant, you are still eligible for Direct Loan.</p>

5

<p>It was a Pell Grant. The Direct Loan website ([Applying</a> for Federal Direct Loans](<a href=“http://www.direct.ed.gov/applying.html]Applying”>http://www.direct.ed.gov/applying.html)) says I am eligible for $9,500 my first year of college, $10,500 my second year of college, $12,500 for my third year of college, and $12,500 for my 4th year of college but it is ultimately up to the school’s decision to see how much I can take out and I didn’t have the option to last semester. I’m trying to get a hold on the Bursar to inquire about it but I can’t seem to catch them.</p>

6

<p>Never heard that it is up to the school to decide how much Stafford/Direct loan you need.
What school is this?</p>

7

<p>How many is “many years?” You must be 26 years old to be classified as an independent student and thus eligible for the heightened Stafford Loan limits.</p>

<p>Obtaining credit cards to pay your tuition is an insanely bad idea.</p>

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</p>

<p>“Many?” You only need one.</p>

<p>Your graduate school application won’t even exist if you can’t pay for a bachelor’s degree - ergo, you need to attend your in-state public schools that are affordable. The rest is ultimately secondary - if you can do well at even a middling program and pursue the opportunities available to you, you’ll have a good shot at graduate studies.</p>

<p>What state are you in and what is your intended major?</p>

8

<p>Well I do meet the requirements to be classified as an independent, but why is using credit cards to pay tuition a bad idea? As far as post-graduate job prospects go, glazing over some average incomes, even if I go into $100,000 debt (considering interest) and I make $50k/yr, if I continue to follow the economical lifestyle I’ve lived my entire life, I could pay all that off in less than a few years which doesn’t sound so bad to me.</p>

<p>I meant the options for schools are low for me…the “good” schools (opportunities for undergraduate research, funding, faculty, etc.) in NY are too expensive and/or pretty difficult to get into (even with a 4.0 GPA, which is not happening for me). I’d really like to get into a top tier school though, as a stepping stone for an advantage to a high ranking graduate school. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone from some no-name low-ranked college getting into grad school in the top 5 (Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Berkeley, Stanford) for my field (Physics or Materials Science). I need to get into one of these schools so I can have higher funding and access to better lab equipment for my independent research as opposed to limited/cheaper schools.</p>

9

<p>You have no idea of how bad it would be to put your tuition on a credit card.</p>

<p>And, no, if you earn $50k per year, you would NOT be able to pay off $100k in debt in a few years. You can’t live for free with family, so you’d have to PAY TAXES (a lot of taxes since you’re a single person), you’d have to pay living expenses…housing, utilities, food, car, car insurance, gasoline, cell phone, internet, cable, clothing, etc. You’ll have VERY LITTLE left over each month to put towards loans. </p>

<p>You need to find cheaper options. Find an instate public that has your major.</p>

10

<p>You have several strong in-state public schools - SUNY Binghamton, UBuffalo, UAlbany, Stony Brook University. Any one of those is a major, well-respected research university.</p>

<p>If you don’t think you can get into any of those as an in-state resident, how do you expect to get into “better” out-of-state schools?</p>

<p>More to the point, you cannot borrow more than, at most, $12,500 per year. Period. Nobody will loan you the money. Ergo, you need to get realistic about what schools you can afford to attend - because you won’t be going to any graduate school if you end up 8 credits short of a degree with $10,000 in unpaid bills holding up the release of your transcript.</p>

<p>There are far more than “five” quality graduate schools in physics anyway.</p>

11

<p>Also, if you think that somehow you can’t get into a top graduate school from strong public universities, you need to take the “prestige” googles off. SUNYs are not “no-name, low-ranked colleges.”</p>

12

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<p>It sound like you may not have any credit cards, so in case this is actually a serious question:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Credit cards have VERY high interest rates, usually 10-20% or more. If you don’t know what this means long-term, play with this calculator:
[Bankrate.com</a> credit card calculator – How much will the minimum credit card payment cost me?](<a href=“http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/managing-debt/minimum-payment-calculator.aspx]Bankrate.com”>Credit Card Minimum Payment Calculator - Bankrate)</p></li>
<li><p>Thankfully, no one is likely to let you do this, anyway. Credit cards have limits. If you have a credit card, do you know the limit on your card? Your limit would be based on your income and credit history, and you say you have little of both. You probably would not get a $5,000 card limit, never mind $100,000. You can’t get around this by getting multiple cards–any card issuer will see in your credit report what the credit limit is on your other cards.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Also, many schools charge a fee if you pay by credit card–with my kids it is 2.3% on top of the bill at one school and 2.5% at the other. So you would be paying interest for years on those fees, too.</p>

13

<p>

Well, considering I haven’t lived without most of those things for most of my life, I don’t see why it’d be a problem in the future. Just roughly estimating the finances and taxes from federal/state brackets, I think I’ll have a little more than “very little” left over. Maybe “a few years” is slightly optimistic, but as long as I can perform research in my field for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t mind a lifetime of debt. What else more could I want?</p>

<p>

When I researched different undergraduate rankings, methodologies, etc. most of the listings did not even mention any of those in the top 100, so naturally I did not believe they were strong at all. The only ones of recognition I remember are Cornell/Columbia, both Ivies and I presume difficult to get into as transfers. I had been accepted to both as a high schooler, but as I remember neither one of them offered much money so I couldn’t attend then either.</p>

<p>When comparing the public schools you listed to the repute of other public schools such as Berkeley, UCI, UMich Ann Arbor, CU Boulder, UIUC, etc. they honestly seem rather weak in comparison. I had considered relocating to California to try and attend one of these, but I wasn’t able to gather enough demographics as much as I would’ve liked. I only stay in NYC because I’m very familiar with the city, so I know all the spots to crash in, places to obtain free meals, where to avoid, the timing of things, etc. and I can get by rather easily since I know where all the resources are located. I wasn’t confident I could survive in a state on the other side of the country, so I didn’t take the risk.</p>

<p>I’m aware that there are plenty of quality graduate schools, but I believe the better ones are less limited in terms of technology and money which would make accessibility much easier as opposed to having to spend the time+money to travel and use third-party equipment or having to order parts/chemicals unavailable whereas a wealthier school might have plenty in stock for immediate disposal.</p>

<p>Am I misinformed about anything?</p>

14

<p>Yes. “Undergraduate rankings” are uniformly complete and utter ********. Their methodologies are nonsensical and without a shred of empirical support. Ignore them. If you write in your graduate Statement of Purpose “I went to this awesomely ranked university that USNWR said was awesome,” your application will be laughed out of the committee.</p>

<p>What matters is not, to a point, the university you attend, but what you do at that university. If you go to a SUNY, leverage your research opportunities, excel in your courses and develop relationships with professors, you will be in a strong position for graduate school.</p>

<p>More to the point, absolutely nothing other than affordability actually matters, because no matter how much “prestige” you want, you can only graduate from a university that you can pay for. And you can’t go to graduate school until you, well, graduate.</p>

15

<p>In regards to factors such as letters of recommendation: a former classmate of mine who was matriculated at Princeton was admitted into Harvard for his graduate school of choice, and he had recommendations from his PI who was a NAS member and a Harvard alumni, a Nobel Laureate at his school, and also a scientist from Germany with whom he was able to do research with due to recommendations of the aforementioned folk. Since there aren’t any of these high-powered professors at SUNYs, how much would this hurt me as competition?</p>

16

<p>I agree with polarscribe at the undergrad level rankings are total BS. Cream always rises to the top and you can get a great education anywhere if you are willing to put in the time and the work.</p>

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<p>If you are in NYC, keep the summer research opportunity, finish community college and transfer to City College (CUNY) which is very well respected in the sciences and with their new expansions has some very cutting edge labs(apparently you are not doing enough research). Yes, they are producing Fulbright, Mellon and other prestigious research opportunities after graduating.</p>

<p>[Students</a> - Notable People - CUNY](<a href=“http://www.cuny.edu/about/people/notable-students.html?id=allwinners]Students”>http://www.cuny.edu/about/people/notable-students.html?id=allwinners)</p>

<p>In addition there are great student opportunities for research</p>

<p>[Student</a> Research - Research - CUNY](<a href=“http://www.cuny.edu/research/sr.html]Student”>http://www.cuny.edu/research/sr.html)</p>

<p>Yes, there are plenty of people who finish at CUNY and go on to Harvard, Princeton, Columbia for grad school because at the end of the day it is about GPA/test scores and research (all which are in your control).</p>

<p>With Pell, and a small stafford loan, it is definitely an affordable option.</p>

<p>At the end of the day your are going where your money can take you. If you need a job, beggars can’t be choosers; even if you are flipping burgers at McDonalds or working the night shift at UPS, you are bringing in money. Or get a full time job and go to school at night (plenty of people do it).</p>

17

<p>Matheo, if you think there are no great professors at SUNY/CUNY schools, you really haven’t done any research at all.</p>

18

<p>I was accepted to seven of eight graduate schools I applied to, several of which are among the best and most respected in my field - outdoor recreation management/interpretation. I enrolled at Indiana University, which is the oldest and largest recreation program in the country. I am now employed by the Forest Service and have a permanent job waiting for me when I graduate. Guess where I went to undergrad?</p>

<p>The University of Idaho.</p>

<p>Take your “prestige” blinders off. Your worldview will get a lot more interesting.</p>

19

<p>Just an update - the past couple months I have been accepted to MIT, Cornell University, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), UC Berkeley, and Stony Brook as a safety school. I have decided to attend Cornell as they offered me a full ride.</p>