<p>I will be attending SUNY New Paltz this fall. I barely had the money to pay for this emester, and am going to have a very hard time paying for the net semester. My questionis, if I apply to take a year (two semesters) off when I would be in my sophomore year, what would the consequences be? What would the good things about it be? Is taking a year off to earn money a good enough reason for the school to grant me this hiatus?
-Thanks,
Melissa</p>
<p>The risk is that you wouldn’t return. A lot of students take some time off to work, find that they like having money and enjoying life and don’t return to finish their degrees.</p>
<p>I know a couple of people who did this successfully (i.e. they got their degrees). Assuming you do it well, you will likely be pushing your graduation date back a year, but if you fear taking out too much in loans and having those loans hanging over your head for years after graduation, this could be a good option.</p>
<p>There are no real consequences to taking a year off as far as future prospects go - plenty of people take extra time to graduate, and employers don’t care when you graduate as long as you do graduate.</p>
<p>If I were you, I would sit down and figure out a VERY strict budget. Some basic questions are:</p>
<p>How much will school cost? Including peripherals like books, food, housing, etc. How can you reduce these costs? … when I was in college, I often used textbooks in the library instead of buying them myself, and living off campus provided a cheaper alternative to on-campus housing.
How much can you make in a job that does not require a college degree?
How much debt are you willing to endure?
What is your income potential upon graduation? Take some majors that you might want to do, and look at salary surveys from SUNY NP’s career center. Assume you will earn a bit less than the median (just to be conservative). Compare that to the cost of school, and you will see how much each extra year of school costs you. Then do a CBA to figure out what plan of attack is best. It could be best to take one year off, save as much as possible and then dive right back in. It could also be best to take a semester off, take lighter course loads and work a significant (20+ hours a week) job during the school year.</p>
<p>The biggest drawback is that you likely will not be able to command a salary that would justify the year off. If you get a job paying $10.00 an hour, 40 hours a week, you could expect to net $18,000 while missing out on about $22,000 in expenses, but that would set you back a year in school, so when you are in your senior year, you will have roughly $25,000 in school expenses and be missing out on about $40,000 in salary (basic estimate). This means that the year you spend working would actually cost you $25,000 over the course of four years (including opportunity costs/benefits, you would gain $40,000 next year and lose $65,000 in four years).</p>
<p>The option is most beneficial if you literally cannot afford the cost of school and cannot obtain the loans to attend. Otherwise, it’s fiscally wiser to finish as early as possible and pay off your student loans as quickly as you can.</p>