Oops, forgot to tag atomicPACMAN07
@akylam when you borrow government money in excess of what you think you can actually pay off in a reasonable period of time (10 years) it shows that either 1) you got way over your head with the debt for an education you are getting or 2) you expect to be bailed out at some point in your life when you can’t make all the payments. I am not denying education is important but some educations are grossly overpriced and not worth the sticker price. CU Boulder OOS is an example of this and you may think it is worth it until you start paying back those loans for a very very long time…4 years of experience is not worth a lifetime of misery.
@atomicPACMAN07
Thanks for the advice. I have decided to go to UCR and make the best of it. And possibly transfer to one of my top choice UC’s. Either way I’ll try to do my best. I know I can TAG to UCI or something rather easily out of community college, but I’d rather not go through the process again and miss out on important connections I can make with research/internships at an actual university.
@atomicPACMAN07 A loan is not a lifetime of misery. All depends on how much money the student makes and the size of the loan. Ask Donald Trump about loans. :-0 ! Proper use of an education loan is a good investment, but CU Boulder is not that special, so I still agree that a California student is better off staying inside their own state system which is educationally equivalent or superior to Colorado’s state schools,( Colorado School of Mines is our academic strongest option, CU Boulder is not as good so far for engineering except maybe aerospace engineering ) . Also CA has better weather and nice campuses. Boulder is really not that special, its just a small town with snow in May, with a lot of music, theatre, arts and hiking. U of Colorado can and will get better academically with more state investments, but its weaker academically than most U of Cal Flagship schools. For Colorado students though its a bargain and very strong for math, physics, education majors, premeds, biology, chemistry and music.
The student can and should transfer to his own state flagship in California and he will be better off. Glad to see thats what he decided to do.
@Coloradomama I was only having strong words against the loans because they were so much (OP wanted $160k of debt with $1000+ monthly payments for 10+ years…that’s insane to me). There’s reasonable debt (full stafford amount of $27,000) while anything more than that just isn’t worth the ROI. Even for something like Mines you’re hard pressed to convince me to borrow $50,000-$60,000–which I was ready to do tbh when selecting a college–that could be debt free somewhere else that I did and have all that pocket change towards a car, early retirement start, down payment on house, etc. Would Mines or Boulder be worth $27,000 in debt? Yes absolutely. No ifs or butts. But $160,000? Come on…I’m sure not the “king of debt” like The Donald. 