Binghamton is your only affordable choice.
If you take out the max of $27k in undergrad loans, your payments would be about $300/mo for 10 years. That’s basic, and you can get deferrals and income based repayments, but that just makes everything longer - the interest, the repayment, the pain.
My daughter’s monthly expenses are:
$1000 rent and utilities (sharing with one other person, and it’s a nice place)
$275 car payment (2.99% rate on a $15k car)
$175 car insurance
$800 income taxes
$0 health insurance (company pays)
$150 student loan payment (she only borrowed $15k)
That’s $2400 and she hasn’t eaten or washed her clothes or bought any gas for the car. Doubling a student loan payment gets her to $2550 per month. Her biggest expense now? A dog. It really is her one luxury.
My niece was the same with a first job earning $36k per year. She paid more for her apt but had no car. She had NO extra money and her student loans were paid, temporarily, by her parents. She could only afford a cat, and a small one at that.
Most recent grads have very tight budgets, and the difference between a $150/mo student loan payment and a $300 payment is really a lot - coffees, gym membership, vacations, going home for Christmas.
It’s real money and it is YOUR money.
You could not take out that level of loans on your own. Even if your parents would sign for them, having a ton of student loans (and you must assume additional loans would be needed for law school) would handcuff your life decisions for 20+ years after graduation. The large payments you would have to make to cover the debt service on your loans would interfere with every adult decision you make – it would mean you probably couldn’t take that amazing job at a start-up for less pay, get that new car, take that vacation, get the home you want etc.
In addition, you absolutely cannot count on getting into an Ivy League law school (admissions are super competitive) and getting one of those few mega high paying jobs to pay off your debt. It would not be prudent to plan out your financial future under the assumption that every single best possible circumstance will happen.
And FWIW I think Binghamton is every bit as prestigious as your other options.
So I finally received my financial aid for Syracuse and they gave me a good amount of money. Over $17,000+work study.
I really like Spelman, but they gave me absolutely no financial aid. I have a few outside scholarships, but I’d still be in debt for both but more for the later.
Is there anyway I can appeal for more money? I wanted a school that would get me into an Ivy League law school, and looking at their recruiting schedule I see they all recruit at Spelman. But Syracuse is still a great school so I’m lost.
I admittedly don’t have a strong concept of the consequences of taking out loans. I have people close to me telling me to choose the cheaper school(Binghamton) over the more expensive ones(Spelman) and (Syracuse) and vice versa.
For some reason I only see the short term outcome and not the longterm, and I value prestige over costs.
What is the impact of student debt later in life? And if I get a high paying job as a result of attending these schools, won’t I be able to pay it off?
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Since repetitive threads are not permitted by the Terms of Service, I merged the three similar threads.
@ucbalumnus this is not absolutely true. I know law school students who have received good awards at Columbia, Georgetown, Cornell, NYU…which are all great law schools.
It used to be that law schools didn’t offer much in merit aid, but that tide has turned a bit.
There are multiple issues getting muddied here. It is absolutely true that there is an oversupply of lawyers, and that there are serious questions to get clear on before making a decision to commit to law school. (The book “Don’t Go To Law School (Unless): A Law Professor’s Inside Guide to Maximizing Opportunity and Minimizing Risk” by Paul Campos is a good and balanced introduction to this decision process.)
BUT… OP is a high school senior who has 3+ years of education and life experience to go through before even her earliest opportunity to apply to law school. Having law school as her plan-of-record right now is really not a problem per se.
What IS a problem is her presumption that her hypothetical law degree will generate a substantial hypothetical income, at some point almost a decade in the future, which makes it okay to saddle herself and her parents with great big pile of REAL and inescapable debt, NOW, for an undergraduate degree that will confer as-yet-undetermined earning power in its own right. (Also, all this with a large side order of hypothetical scholarships.)
And for that matter, as happy1 rightly points out, for an undergrad degree which is not inherently more valuable or prestigious than a debt-free undergrad degree from Binghamton.
OP, go to an accepted students’ event at Binghamton and get excited about the opportunity. The affordability gap here is such that there is no justification for your other options. Adjusting expectations is hard, and I know it’s an “easy for you to say” situation when people who aren’t emotionally attached to your hoped-for college experience tell you flatly that this is what it is. But truly… this is what it is. And luckily for you, “what it is” happens to be a really great, debt-free education at an excellent school with accomplished peers and all the resources to craft the college experience you want. Embrace the possible, which is actually pretty great.