I was accepted to WashU earlier in the admissions season, but learned I wouldn’t be able to attend after all the finances fell where they did. I didn’t want to take loans out for WashU. However, I was also lucky enough to be accepted into Columbia, and that sorta changed things. My friends/family are split here. I would have to take out considerable loans to attend Columbia, but I’m scared that turning down the offer of admission could hurt me in the future if I apply there for graduate school. And it feels a bit like I’m just kinda watching the train go by and hoping it stops again four years from now.
Basically, here’s the situation:
I could pay for my state school education entirely on my own, out of my own pocket with scholarships and money I’ve saved, OR I could go into debt and go to Columbia. I’m a planned economics major, and I don’t know if the opportunities at Columbia are truly going to offset the cost. But then, like I’ve said before, I’m just terrified I’m letting go of a chance I may not get again. I’m sure I can be successful at my state school, since I managed to do okay going to a less than stellar public high school in the Midwest for the last four years. I dunno, man.
Am I just being an entitled little snot? Am I stuck on the prestige on the school? Sense and/or swift kick to the ass appreciated.
What state school!!! UC Berkeley, go there. University of Wyoming, go to Columbia.
Parent here – what does “considerable loans” mean? The most you are able to borrow, on your own, is about $5500. per year. If you came out with $22,000 total in personal debt for Columbia, that would be an appropriate decision. But if you are talking about asking your parents to take out loans for your education, as they approach retirement age etc., then that is an entirely different question.
As for grad school applications, those are entirely separate and weighed differently than undergrad, so turning down Columbia undergrad will not affect your possible Ph.D. application after you complete your undergraduate education elsewhere.
@TomSrOfBoston Ohio State.
@Midwestmomofboys Considerable loans means greater than 50k. Okay, the grad school thing makes sense. I was scared they’d be like, offended that I didn’t commit, haha.
Going to Ohio State will not harm your grad school/career plans in the least. $50,000 plus in students loans will crimp your lifestyle after graduating.
@TomSrOfBoston That’s good to know, then. I didn’t think OSU had a good academic reputation.
I think Columbia is worth the 50k (if you mean total, not per year). I am looking at spending about 250k to send my son there. You might factor in what career you plan to pursue and how challenging this would be for your family/you to bear.
@1203southview I am going for economics, thinking of either consultancy or collegiate teaching.
If your debt is 50k for all 4 years total, not 200k, I personally would go for it. Heck, some people pay that for a car! I think Columbia would be an amazing experience… and I went to OSU!
I transferred from OSU to Hopkins after two years… college is what you make of it and I got everything I could out of OSU. The social and cultural experience of being at Columbia in NYC would be fantastic though.
For consultancy, Columbia would be far better. For a PhD program, I don’t think an extra $50K is worth is (OSU would be fine), but I’d heavily advise you to major in something quantitative (if econ, pick the most quantitative track).
Go to Columbia, Screw OSU (Northwestern kid here). If the debt is less than $150k, then take Columbia. I also guess it depends on what major, because if you do grad school then the debt could REALLY hurt you over time (since the interest racks up while you’re not earning any money in grad school), but if you’re doing engineering or business and you want to go work straight out of college then go with Columbia. For sure.
There are some professions that really care where you go to college. Consulting is one of them, especially if you are looking to work for one of the more exclusive firms. When you say “greater than $50k”, what do you mean exactly? If you are looking at $55-$65k and you really wish to work for one of the main consulting houses, Columbia may be worth the debt. On the other hand, if you are looking at $80k+ debt, it may not be worth the risk.
Anything over $27K in debt will have to be cosigned by your parents.
Where are YOU getting the $50K in loans? If you mean your parents are going to borrow the money, then that’s a whole other thing. YOU are not going get offered more than $5500 in loans this year. If you go the cosign route, be aware that your parents are just as much on the hook in terms of loan being on their credit reports and for repayment, as you are, and those type of loans usually have stringent terms. PLUS with parent only signing might be a better deal due to flexibility and built in insurance (you or parent who signed dies, then the loan is forgiven; not the case with those cosigned loans most of the time).
So if your parents are truly in no position to take out a loan for/with you (which comes down to about the same thing, really), and would be in financial trouble if they got caught having to repay such loans if something happens to you, it’s a terrible idea to go that route. Most lenders are not going to give an 18 year old money. Do tell, if you find one without a co signer.
@cptofthehouse @"Erin’s Dad" Yeah, that’s my bad in not specifying. A parent would cosign on a loan we read about in the little Columbia aid packet they sent us.
Well, everyone involved should read the fine print on those loans. Paying the piper is very painful, but not paying him after giving him your kid, even more of a disaster. As those in the past have learned.
@cptofthehouse Yeah, the potentially ruining nature of those loans (if I don’t get a job with a high enough salary to compensate) is what frightens me away from the opportunity.
Costs go up every single year. What looks like 50k in total debt right now, could easily end up being 60k or more by the time you finish - and that is without considering interest at all.
If a loan for 35k is chump change for your parents, and they are borrowing that because it makes other financial decisions easier for them, that is one thing. If paying it off will be hard for them, that is another.
My vote is for the cheap state school. 50k to 60k can buy you and your family a lot of other fun stuff - including the first year of an MS Econ or Finance program if you stick with your current goals.
I think you should go to Ohio State.
I do agree that consulting is one of those prestige-focused fields in which where you go to school matters. I also agree that even a BA-level business analyst at a top consulting firm, like the types of jobs Columbia graduates routinely get, could comfortably repay $50K in loans (although not $75K+ in loans - you simply said over $50K, and that’s not precise).
The main problem is that you are going to undergrad, and college students change their mind all the time about what they want to do. At the end of my senior year in high school, I wanted to be an actuary, which is a well-paying job. By the time the summer began, I had changed my mind to going to law school and majoring in political science, and by the end of my freshman year I wanted to be a high school guidance counselor and was majoring in psychology. High school guidance counselors make significantly less than actuaries, so if someone had advised me to take on debt on the basis of what I wanted to do when I was 17 I might have made a huge mistake! (Or, conversely, I might have felt my career choices become constrained because of the debt I took on. And by the way, I’m not doing any of those things now.)
There’s a chance that you go to college and fall in love with a field or a career that is completely different from what you think you want.
Besides that, take these into account:
- Ohio State is no slouch - it's a well-respected university. Take this, for example: the Fisher School of Business has an undergraduate "consulting cluster" that is designed to familiarize students with the consulting industry. The participating companies in this curriculum for 2014-2015 were McKinsey, Accenture, and Deloitte. Lots of people say that these firms only recruit at a few schools, and that's somewhat true, but they recruit at a much wider range of schools than people tend to think they do (for example, the big fish - these three plus BCG, Bain, and Booz Allen Hamilton - regularly recruited at my alma mater, Spelman. I did small group consulting training with a Deloitte consultant!) The cluster is also taught by Jack Slavinski, who is currently SVP at a boutique consulting firm focused on tech and financial services who's worked at Citibank, GE Capital, and Nationwide.
- Even if you wanted to go an elite school to get that leg up into consulting...you could always go to an elite school for an MBA. MBAs usually come with very little non repayable financial support. But there, it makes sense to borrow - you might borrow $120K for a Columbia MBA but your starting base salary might be $140K at a top consulting firm. You can pay the debt off pretty quickly and your salary will only rise from there. But if you borrowed $65K in undergrad, you'd probably still want to get an MBA later so you could climb the ladder.