<p>Hey everyone I was recently accepted a few places and narrowed it down to 2 - Boston College and UC Davis. I will be paying for college with loans and with financial aid BC comes out to 40k and Davis 20k. I want to go to med school after and become a surgeon. I really want to go to Boston College but am scared the debt will ruin my life. How hard will it be paying off debt - where should I go? Boston College is a private with more research opportunities, smaller classes, more prestigious etc. (I may get into a better med school after) but twice as expensive. Should I sacrifice my wants to save the 80k over 4 years (keep in mind med school will be another 200k or so). Prestige or affordability? PLEASE HELP!</p>
<p>Med schools will NOT care whether you go to BC or Davis. Going to BC will NOT help you get into a “better” med school. BTW…all US MD schools are excellent.</p>
<p>Sounds like neither school is affordable and will mean too much undergrad debt…are you saying that going to Davis means $80k in debt? that is crazy. </p>
<p>Will your parents qualify and cosign those crazy loans? What happens with those loans when you go to med school?</p>
<p>They will help as much as they can but it won’t be a notable amount, maybe just the interest. The loan will continue and expand until I get a job but I’m set on becoming a surgeon, will a surgeons salary not make this loan look minuscule? Is it that difficult to pay off?</p>
<p>To start with, you can’t borrow $20K on your own for each year as an undergrad. You are limited to the maximums for the federal loans ($5,500 freshman, $6,500 sophomore, $7,500 junior, and $7,500 senior year). Anything beyond that will require a credit-worthy co-signer who will be on the hook for the money if you can’t pay it back. Or your parents will have to take out PLUS loans that only have their name on them.</p>
<p>So yes, Davis might not be affordable. Run the financial aid packages here, and talk with your parents about how you are going to come up with the money: <a href=“Award Letter Requirements - Finaid”>Your Guide for College Financial Aid - Finaid;
<p>Right now you want to become a surgeon. Even if you do achieve that goal, it will be many years from now. With the increasingly managed nature of medical care in the US, it is not possible to safely predict what your income could end up being. So yes, you could find out that it is extremely difficult to pay down the med school debt. Don’t take on any debt for your undergrad if you can avoid it.</p>
<p>Thank you both for all your help! Yes my parents would co-sign but their assistance is very limited. Davis is my cheapest option and my debt may not run at exactly 80k after but I cannot scale an exact number. Would Boston College be suicide? I have a lot of faith in myself to do well later in life but have no gage on how difficult it is to pay of debt. I don’t want to miss out on an opportunity but if I’m talking crazy even considering it someone let me know.</p>
<p>Having 80k debt at the end of undergrad for someone planning to do medicine is a hard choice. 160k - not recommended at all.</p>
<p>$80,000 in debt will be really tough if you do not get into medical school (most pre-meds do not get into any medical school). Even engineering or CS majors would find that to be a heavy burden.</p>
<p>Even if you do get into medical school, that $80,000 will be added to $280,000 or so of medical school debt for a total of $360,000.</p>
<p>Even at physician pay levels, as listed at <a href=“Latest Medical News, Clinical Trials, Guidelines - Today on Medscape”>Latest Medical News, Clinical Trials, Guidelines - Today on Medscape; , that is still a lot of debt to pay off. That debt can pressure you into seeking the highest paying medical specialty, even if you would rather do one of the lower paying ones.</p>
<p>Obviously, $160,000 of undergraduate debt is worse than $80,000 of undergraduate debt.</p>
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<p>If you go to Boston College and you have to borrow $40,000 a year, you will be in debt $160,000 after four years. Let’s assume that you can actually borrow that kind of debt. Let’s also assume that you do go to medical school, and let’s assume that by the time you start each year of med school is $60,000 (which is probably an underestimate). You will borrow the full cost, so that is $240,000. $160K + 240K = $400,000.</p>
<p>Assuming the standard loan interest rate of 6.8% (also an underestimate, as the majority of your loans will be private or PLUS loans), and a repayment period of 10 years (the standard), you will have to repay $4,600 per month. For the record, that’s about $55,000 per year. That’s about twice what I make currently as a graduate student. Even if you extend the loan period to 30 years (which I think is pretty common for medical loans), that’s still $2600/month. What’s more, over the life of the loan you will pay almost a million dollars in combined interest and principal. The interest comes to just under $540,000 over the lifetime of the loan, and remember that we underestimated the interest.</p>
<p>That is a life-crushing amount of debt. Physicians are well-paid, but primary care physicians average about $180,000 and a starting specialist wouldn’t even make enough money to avoid that being life-crushing debt, especially after taxes and malpractice. Faith, unfortunately does not defy statistics. You won’t be able to enjoy your upper-middle-class status as a physician with those loans hanging over your head. They will impact your ability to get married, buy a house, buy a car, and plan for your children’s future. Let’s not even get into what might happen if you are unable to get into medical school - or change your mind, as most pre-meds do. Totally. Not. Worth it.</p>
<p>I used the loan calculators at FinAid.org, by the way.</p>
<p>Thank you all for your help especially taking your time to do these calculations! I feel like some are screwed for worse case scenarios (med school seems to be closer to 45 than 60 without aid and the average salary for orthopedic surgeons I read was closer to 250,000 per year) regardless I definitely don’t want my life “crushed” because of debt. I’m sure I want to do med school but if I chickened out wouldn’t it be wiser to get a degree from a more prestigious school - since that’s what most pre meds seem to do? And from what I’m hearing should I consider community college and turn down my options because of financial obstacles (my list includes University of Michigan Boston College Boston University Cal Poly UC Davis and UC San Diego - Davis being the cheapest after aid and BC the school I want to attend)</p>
<p>It’s not a matter of chickening out… half premeds don’t get into any med school. And a large percentage of students who thought they’d be premed turn out not to make it past the premed requirements, so this half of premed applicants are already a pretty select bunch.
Can’t your parents contribute? Taking on more than $5,500 in loans your first year, and more than $27k for all 4 years is dangerous.
Yes, anything like 80k in debt is crushing and totally insane. In fact, it’s not even guaranteed you’ll be allowed to borrow this much as an undergrad - it happens every year, the student is denied for a further loan and is stuck.
Are you in-state for California publics? How can UCD, UCSD, and Cal Poly be so expensive?
Remember that “average salary” typically means “after 10-15 years”, not “right when you start”. And you cannot count on becoming a surgeon, because the odds are roughly the same as winning the lottery. For a premed, just getting into med school, right now your odds are 25% at best and probably closer to 10-15%. Odds that you’ll get to choose your specialty are minuscule.</p>
<p>I am in state for publics but UCs are still over 30k a year including room and board and cal states are about 25 out the door. How does everyone afford college haha are there not others like me whose parents couldn’t afford a college fund? </p>
<p>What about blue&gold/calgrants/middle class grants? Did you fill out FAFSA?
Your parents are expected to contribute part of their earnings though, you as their child are their primary responsibility, but the cost of UC’s is supposed to be covered with 9k (federal loans + work earnings) from the student and the rest by parents and federal/state grants.</p>
<p>A $20,000 net price at a UC likely means a FAFSA EFC of around $11,000. But if the parents are unable or unwilling to contribute that (perhaps due to a high spending or high debt lifestyle relative to their income), then college affordability becomes questionable with just need-based financial aid.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it may be that the OP and parents did not have the money talk last year. If they did, then the OP could have stacked the application list with large merit scholarship schools like these:
<a href=“Automatic Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #300 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>Automatic Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #300 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums;
<a href=“Competitive Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #50 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>Competitive Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #50 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums;
<p>The choices now are not especially attractive:</p>
<p>a. Go to college with large parent-co-signed debt.
b. Start at community college to save money – not great for pre-med purposes since some medical schools look down on community college courses and grades, and the last two years of college at a four year school will still have similar cost issues.
c. Gap year (no school, probably work) and reapply to large merit scholarship schools.</p>
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From this and other comments the OP seems to have a simplistic view of college education, one common among many HS kids. That attending “a more prestigious school” somehow is going to make a difference, that Boston College kids have better prospects than UC Davis kids.</p>
<p>Based off salary it may seem that our EFC is around 10k but when asking my parents it seems it’s much lower. How can I portray this to get more aid, can I appeal and try to get more?</p>
<p>The college decides what your financial need is, not your parents (otherwise all parents would estimate they can pay very little :p). However if you have another sibling in college or medical expenses that aren’t covered by insurance and are for a family member, then they may be able to increase your financial aid.
If your EFC is 10k, then your parents should come up with 10k, your should earn/borrow 9k, and the rest should be covered by grants. If you don’t have any financial aid, it means your EFC was calculated to be higher than that. </p>
<p>Saturday, I was speaking to a new ObGyn who was a few months out of residency. She told me she attended her state flagship for UG and state medical school to save money. Then she looked at me and said, “could you believe I had classmates who borrowed to go to Harvard undergrad and were in medical school with me? What were they thinking. They now owe so much money.” The moral of the story is implied. Please spend as little as possible so you can become a future physician with as little financial stress as possible. </p>
<p>As others have said, prestige is not an issue for med school accept. Having large loans in the UG years can definitely affect your quality of life after graduating with your bachelors. There is this thing called interest that keeps right on churning and those PLUS or cosigned loans do not usually have favorable interest rates. WIth the cosigned ones, anything happen to you and your parents are still stuck paying most of the time, so you better get some life insurance on yourself too. Also, as other have noted, it’s not like med school acceptance is a guarantee and you will have many years before you earn dollar one as doctor. In the meantime you will have all of these loans building up all of that interest and some may need for payments to start even if you are in med school. </p>
<p>UCD is not exactly way below BC in prestige either. If you were talking about SouthEast California State College vs BC, that 's one thing. But UCD vs BC? There is a good argument for one over the other when it comes to prestige, and I wouldn’t bet on BC winning the rounds either. UCs are excellent schools. </p>
<p>The advantage BC would possibly have over UCD is if their premed program is more nurturing and has a high success rate in freshman aspirants actually sticking it out to become med school applicants. That 's the big drop in the percentage. The med school accept rate…phht, most kids without a good chance of acceptance don’t bother to apply, so I would guess it’s pretty good at both schools, and is meaningless to me. JHU has a 100% or close to it accept rate, but I don’t want to even try to guess as to what % of those starting Premed get flushed during the process and not even apply to the PreMed Council or what ever they call it to even get a shot at applying to med school. THe program is the gauntlet, not just the application. Some schools are just more forgiving in grade curve, have smaller classes in the labs and will cheer and help the kid through things like the ever important O-chem course and lab, and others use it a pruning device. Off hand, I’d give the edge to BC on the nice-nice factor, but by how much, I don’t know. I doubt I’d value it at the cost differential A nice school like Sienna College or Stonehill might well be better in that department than BC.</p>
<p>Maybe prestige was a bias choice of words because I just really want to go BC and feel like I’ve worked really hard in high school and it’d hard to settle and go to schools that people over 70 class ranks below me got into 
but this makes sense and thank you all very much… I feel like the private school benefits and “pre-med” at BC would help but I doubt it’s worth 80k 
But back to finances, how does all of this work for privates though? Why didn’t Boston College bring me down to 20k as well if my EFC is 10 (according to them, it’s actually lower) and I’m supposed to summon 9? Where should i get the other 20k if they insist I can afford 40k a year?</p>
<p>BC may have its own methodology for determining financial aid that does not use FAFSA EFC. Many schools do not give good financial aid in any case.</p>