<p>I'm about to graduate from a low ranked college with 50k of debt. Thinking about that much debt from a school no one cares about is making me viscerally ill. I've visited my college's career office and while they told me that our school has tons of successful grads, they couldn't cite any success stories. I feel like a loser and a fool, and this is hanging over my head. Is it normal to feel this way? What happens to mediocre students at bottom tier colleges with enormous student loan debt? </p>
<p>Will you earn a degree? Then that is something. What you do is graduate, find a job, and start paying the loans back. This is real life, you make decisions and live with the outcomes. Has nothing to do with being a loser. You made choices with the information you had at the time. It is what it is, but not, by no means, a ruined life. It will just be harder to get ahead financially for a while, a situation that many people face every day. </p>
<p>What happens to mediocre students at bottom tier colleges with enormous student loan debt?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>They work hard after they graduate, own their life, and do well.</p></li>
<li><p>They don’t work hard, muddle through, blame their school, job, spouse, and do poorly.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Ask your career center to provide you with successful grads contact information, start contacting them to see if they could advise you on how to get a job in your area of interest, better yet, ask them if they have any openings at their firm. I know that’s how my nephews and kid have done to get their summer internship. My kid contacted her sorority sister, who is working at a place where she wants intern, to ask the sorority sister to look over her resume and to give her some advice on how to apply for an internship.</p>
<p>Look at your career center’s job postings. Speak with your professors, they often get requests to recommend students for jobs. You should also reach out to family and friends to help you get a job.</p>
<p>There is nothing scary about 50K student loans. What’s scary is not to have a job after graduation. It is only December. You still have 5-6 months to get a job. Use your nervous energy to find a job.</p>
<p>What state are you in? What is your major?</p>
<p>How did you borrow $50k? did you have a co-signer or are you an independent student? Or did you take more than 4 years?</p>
<p>Look into possibilities for loan forgiveness, such as public service, teaching, via disabilty (or, possibly, the military)… Not sure but Americorps may also help.</p>
<p>Here is one site on debt relief:
<a href=“The Top Student Loan Forgiveness Programs”>http://www.studentdebtrelief.us/forgiveness/</a>
and <a href=“The Top Student Loan Forgiveness Programs”>http://www.studentdebtrelief.us/forgiveness/obama-student-loan-forgiveness/</a></p>
<p>Get moving.</p>
<p>Once you are closing in on a job you will realize that you haven’t ruined your life and that paying off your loans is a matter of being disciplined. Once you’re earning a salary, you’ll need financial discipline. Right now, you have to approach finding a job as a fifth course (or sixth if you are taking five courses already).</p>
<p>You need to figure out what you’re good at, and how you can leverage your experiences (academic, volunteer, paid employment) into a job. Then you need to plug away at getting folks to talk to you.</p>
<p>But first things first. What are you studying and what kind of job are you interested in?</p>
<p>While it’s nice to hear success stories of others, the only success story that matters is YOURS. </p>
<p>What is your major? Have you done any work related to it, or had internships related to your major? What is your career goal? Have you started to apply for jobs? Does your career center have job listings…some do? </p>
<p>Do you know any people who are currently working in your field of interest? </p>
<p>Maybe you can spend part of your winter break shadowing someone in your field.</p>
<p>ETA…my husband completed his degree at a very low ranked school…in engineering. It has not affected his ability to be a successful career engineer for 30 years. </p>
<p>Welcome to the real world. You are facing a moment of truth and it is up to you to be smart about how you look for a job. Besides, even people with degrees from “elite” universities can have a tough time. Good luck.</p>
<p>ps It is very normal to feel this way. Many feel this is a new form of servitude! Debt can limit choices. That said, find out the schedule for repayment and how much per month it will be. If you look up the loan forgiveness programs at the links I posted above, you will also see that the time you spend paying the debt back can be limited. We are sympathetic!</p>
<p>When you ask a college for “success stories” they will only include the famous or notable alumni. They don’t really keep track of the thousands who are perhaps unknown outside their area of expertise, solid financially, doing great in their fields and happy in their lives. So your school doesn’t have a Bill Gates… well, no one really has “Bill Gates” since he didn’t graduate lol. </p>
<p>As unappealing as it may sound, will your parents allow you to live at home for a year or two? If they allow you to live for free or greatly discounted rate, you could sock all that living expense savings into the loan payment and make tremendous progress on the debt. A year of hard nose work and sacrifice could be worth less stress in the years to follow. </p>
<p>Work hard, look at loan forgiveness programs, don’t get behind on the payments. You are hardly alone in your generation. It’ll be OK.</p>
<p>Most students start low int heir first job and work their way up. Can the career counseling office help with job connections?</p>
<p>Both of my kids graduated from no name schools and both had about that same level of debt. One is a medical professional and has a great job with a great salary - the hospital that hired her did not care about the name of the school, but only her national board scores and letters of recommendation. She has paid off over a third of those loans in one year. The other has struggled, but is very happy with life. She survived barely for three years as a substitute teacher and then at a now defunct charter school from *&%+ by moonlighting in the evenings. Now she teaches at a small village school in Alaska where finances are tight but she is content. Life would be a whole lot better without the debt, but it is manageable.</p>
<p>It IS scary and overwhelming. The debt may be with you for a long time. But payments can be set up based on a percentage of income and it will be possible to do it. Can you move back home? Thousands of graduates do that for the first couple of years. Or find a very inexpensive rental home and advertise for a roommate.</p>
<p>Do not panic or get discouraged. Look at this as a problem to overcome, not an insurmountable obstacle.</p>
<p>Honestly, it’s normal to feel this way coming out of Princeton. This is a scary time. If you’re nervous about your career prospects, it means that you’re paying attention. But all the other posters are right that your future depends on how you cope with this challenge, not on decisions you’ve made in the past.</p>
<p>I agree with the other posters who have encouraged you not to panic. It is scary to graduate with debt, regardless of the rank of your school. I clearly remember getting my first payment coupon after law school graduation and feeling sick that it was equal to my monthly rent. I took advantage of a program available then to stretch out the payments from 10 years to 30 years and then worked diligently to pay it off in 5 years. This meant not having a car, living with a roommate, and taking a part-time job on weekends. Some of my friends dealt with this by living at home for two years after graduation. While you are still in school, make lots of contacts and begin networking to find your first job. Take advantage of every resource available to you. Don’t worry about the choices that have already been made, focus on the future and what you can do from here on out. Best of luck to you.</p>
<p>There may be some low-cost certificate programs that you could complete to give yourself some marketable credentials. Go to Monster.com and look for credentials that are being sought by employers. Also, you might look into some state or federal government jobs where they require a college degree, but don’t care that much about the prestige of the college. </p>
<p>I’d also look into income-based repayment programs for your federal student loans. The private loans will be much more of a problem.</p>
<p>There are many many people who are extremely successful who went to no-name schools, and many people who went to prestigious colleges who are unsuccessful. After your first job, employers will care much more about your performance than the name on your degree.</p>
<p>Nme of college is important in very very few careers. None of the us in our family (everybody has graduated from college and Grandkids are going to college) has gone to Elite/Ivy, everybody is working and one is in Med. School.
So, it depends on your major. Ours: Engineering, CS, Medical, Graphic Design, Business.
After saying that, none of us have student loans either. S. graduated long time ago, we paid out of our paychecks. D. was on full tuition Merit and we are paying for the Med. School. Various employers covered my H. and mine UG / Grad. school.
I would never take a student loan. However, it is my stand and yours is apparently different.
So, just find a job and pay it off. It is not that large at all.
BTW, after graduating from no-name local UGs and Grad. Schools (the last was just becuase employers were paying, my H. and I do not need an MBA to perform in our positions), all of us consider ourselves to be a success story. We can only hope the same for D. who is graduating next year from Med. School.</p>
<p>…oh, missed this one. In regard to being mediocre, it is entirely up to a student to decide. Some may decide to have all A’s and others may decide to be mediocre. Specific UG has absolutely nothing to do with this desire. No college will quarantee you A’s and no college will push you down to be mediocre.</p>
<p>Once again, did you read the OP, Miami? This thread is not about grades. And this student HAS student loans, so bragging about your family’s lack of loans in the past or your dau in med school yet again is not going to help this student feel better, which was their hope in starting this tread.</p>
<p>What happens is what you make happen. Get your degree and be proud of that. Then aggressively go after the jobs you want. Hone your interviewing and interaction skills. Good luck! You can DO this! </p>