Too Costly?

Parents Forum
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<p>I posted this under the Financial Aid forum, too. But it might fit better here. I'm asking parents of those who have seen their kids through college, and essentially those who have experience after college. Any input would be acutely appreciated!</p>

<p>I've lately seen nightmare stories about student loans. So essentially, I am seriously considering dropping (I just graduated high school) the school of my choice and attend our local community college for two years.</p>

<p>I choose RIT, who gave me 16,300 in aid. The cost PER YEAR is roughly 22k. My choice of major is Software Engineering (I right now program a bit, and greatly enjoy it).</p>

<p>I am not native to this country. Me and my family moved from Sweden in 2001. My parents are encouraging me to go, but they also did not pay for their education. My dad got his Master in Computer Science from Chalmer's University with only 30,000 in student debt.</p>

<p>They just bought a massive house and such, and they can not guarantee that they can support me in any way. (Our EFC is quite high, if that matters).</p>

<p>I have a hard time imagining the sum of 80,000 with interest.</p>

<p>I graduated high school with a 3.5 gpa, and 1800 SAT's. 700 and 650 on the SAT II's in English and Math II. (Yes, quite average for this board). RIT gave me the most financial aid from all the schools I applied (including the state school. One meet my full need..but according to fafsa, that's about 28k a year).</p>

<p>I understand education is not free. But I am worried if $86,000 will be worth it for a bachelor of science degree. Or rather, if I will be able to live.</p>

<p>Should I instead go this route with community college? Any input will be greatly appreciated!</p>

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<p>If you’re going to major in software engineering and you’re willing to work part-time while you’re in school, you should be able to make about $10K/year toward the $22K. There are ways to cut your costs, as well. Don’t live in the most expensive dorm; cook for yourself; buy used books; etc. I may be optimistic, but based on my son’s income while he was majoring in software engineering, I’d think you could probably manage to keep your total loan to $10K/year or less. Can you graduate in three years instead of four if you work harder than the average bear?</p>

3

<p>Software engineering is one of the few fields that I think a college kid having 80K in debt upon graduation - assuming they emotionally can handle that pressure and have a strong work ethic - can handle.</p>

<p>Check out the actual cost for you to go to community college, esp if you have to pay international prices for it. It might not be as much of a savings as you think vs. RIT.</p>

<p>I agree about the part-time work. If the economy picks up, you could probably make even more than just 10K a year if you are able to contract yourself out for small programming jobs.</p>

<p>Annika</p>

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<p>Ask the financial aid office at RIT what they give to transfer students. If most significant awards are given to freshmen, you could end up worse off by going to JC.</p>

5

<p>Wait, do you mean your cost AFTER aid is $22k a year? As in the base cost is $38,300 per year?</p>

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<p>I am assuming his parents also chipped in some money in addition to the 16k RIT gave him.</p>

<p>At the original poster: Have you looked into going to community college for two years and transferring? Or state universities?</p>

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<p>@dmd77- Thanks. That is reassuring. I am not sure about the possibility of graduating a year early, but I will find out.</p>

<p>@annikasorrensen- I have received a Green Card; I do not need to pay an out of state or international price. </p>

<p>@2bizee- I will ask.</p>

<p>@psych- Yes.</p>

<p>Thank you for all the input! I greatly appreciate it. It’s a very tough situation. I want to attend RIT; however, I also want to make a choice that is not financially unreasonable. I am also visiting the local community college on Monday to see their perspective on this situation. Again, I greatly appreciate your time!</p>

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<p>@SmallCollegesFTW
Right now I am considering going into community college as an alternative and then transferring. The cost to attend the flagship university is roughly the same (21,000 a year). I was wondering if that was the best choice; that is, if paying that much to attend RIT is, essentially, sound rather than going to Community College. While I never envisioned myself attending a CC, I have heard many horror stories in regards to student loans.</p>

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<p>Have you considered taking a gap year and reapplying next year, with an eye toward schools that would give you better merit aid? You might be “behind” in terms of the engineering curriculum if you start at a JC/CC.</p>

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<p>Don’t just talk to the CC folks. Also go to an adviser at RIT. As psych_ indicated, engineering might not be a good one for transfer from CC. It is often a very sequenced and demanding course load. If you do not have CC classes that transfer, you may be behind and have to do an extra year when you get to RIT. Talk to them about a deferring a year if you want to work a year to earn more money before you go. Also talk to them about their cooperative education program. Their web site is down right now, but when S1 looked at them they had a pretty good program to combine working and school.</p>

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<p>Software engineering is a career in which college matters little. If we were talking MIT, Caltech ir Stanford I might stretch to $50K in loans, but I think $80K in loans fgor RIT is absurd and will be an unnecessary burden on you for many, many years. Go to a state school even if it means a term or year off IMO.</p>

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<p>Do make a pro and con list that includes CC opinion (which is very valuable IMO) AND opinion from others. I personally think it would be worth it to take on debt considering the degree. If you are the type of person who can stay focused on the coursework and secure paid internships throughout then you will be fine with the debt.</p>

<p>Going to CC and transferring is not always easy and requires a lot of planning and focus. You absolutely must do the research including talking to the CC and RIT and making sure coursework will transfer. Also do find out if RIT will give merit and how much for a transfer. Based solely on the information you have given, if you were my child I would say go for RIT 4 years, do your best and don’t look back!</p>

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<p>hmom5 - I do agree with you but in this case the state school is the same cost (post #8).</p>

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<p>It is my opinion that $24k is the maximum student loan level to attain an undergrad degree, particularly in this economy. I think that the economic situation should be far different in 4 years but what happens if it is not?</p>

<p>It is indeed unfortunate that your parents have not planned ahead for college education expenses but that is now water over the dam.</p>

<p>My recommendation is for you to do whatever is necessary to keep student loans to a minimum. Two years at the local cc seems to be a wise initial decision. Talk to the RIT finaid dept and get some idea if a similar level of non-loan aid would be likely if you transferred with a superior transcript. Perhaps during that time your parents’ financial situation would improve and they would be able to offer some assistance.</p>

<p>One other thing to consider. What happens if you enroll in RIT and discover that you do not like software design. My son was a compsci major so I know that most courses in that major are far more esoteric and theoretical than simple computer programming; things like discrete math, data structures and algorithms, comporg and models of computation. Some like that, others do not. If there is a local 4 year state college that offers the intro courses for your degree program consider enrolling there, living at home to save costs be it for 2 years and a transfer or the entire 4 years.</p>

<p>Good luck.</p>

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<p>I really disagree about the CC for the first two years. I think the best idea is to take the maximum load every semester (most colleges will allow 5.5 courses a semester without a special petition) and try to graduate a semester or two early. In addition, getting some of the core courses in early would allow you to make contacts that could provide summer internships, co-op work, etc. I know many students who had $15K summer internships after freshman year as a result of good contacts. RIT is known for those contacts. Going to a CC, you limit your summer opportunities in engineering to the summer after junior year, rather than three summers–and those summer jobs are what lead to the post-graduation jobs in engineering.</p>

<p>(Disclosure: my son was offered a small RIT scholarship so I researched it pretty heavily. He ended up at MIT. Graduated in 7 semesters (without that much stress) and thereby saved us $22K. Graduating early saves more money than anything else, and it’s not that hard. I know people who graduated from UWash in 5 semesters, because they cashed in all those AP credits.)</p>

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<p>Just so you are aware, RIT states to expect 5 years to graduate. That will add to your total cost!!! At least this is what they stated to husband and son at accepted students day (engineering though). If you still decide to attend RIT, I would call the software programming dept and ask them the 4 year and 5 year graduation rate.</p>

<p>You got decent aid by the way. Son got 7 or 8K in merit (no financial aid) and he had better grades, ACT’s etc. than poster. Merit was low for him as they “loved” him at his interview. Interviewer spoke to my son in length about son and his interview and told him to expect high merit aid. Right!!!</p>

<p>By the way, son applied to many, many schools, privates and publics and chose a state school which had a ranked engineering program, better or close to the privates engineering ranking. No loans and very cost effective for us. </p>

<p>Where else did you apply/get in. Any other considerations besides a CC or RIT?</p>

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<p>Add my voice to the (small) chorus that would rather see you start in a 4-year degree SE program. You will learn a LOT from your classmates (and dorm-mates!). Much better at RIT than at a CC IMHO. Take a campus job, find paying summer internships (which is very doable in SE), be a dorm RA, or whatever. At the VERY LEAST speak with a departmental advisor at RIT to find out what their policies are regarding transferring in from a CC. Good luck! SE is very interesting work. (Pays well too.)</p>

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<p>Could you tell us what state you are in? I’m assuming that you’re somewhere in New England but knowing the state would help a little.</p>

<p>The quality of community college course varies widely from better than state university to a fraction of university. Our son’s first computing course was about six times the work of the equivalent course at the local community college and carried far greater content. It would be unreasonable to expect the CC course to transfer over to the state university. Actually two of the CC courses transfer over as one state u course and my opinion is that the student isn’t really prepared even with the two courses.</p>

<p>You have a parent that knows what your major entails so I assume that you want to go into software engineering. Most schools in the US have programs in Computer Engineering and Computer Science with the latter having a little more focus on theory. The Computer Science degree is more popular and more well-known.</p>

<p>I do not know the Rochester area but I would suggest a school in an area with a lot of high-tech industry if you’re looking for a part-time job. Companies will send job postings to universities in the area looking for students to do part-time work. If you’re out in the middle of nowhere, finding part-time work can be difficult.</p>

<p>I would also recommend not working your first semester as you may need a semester to adjust to college life. A lot of employers (part-time or full-time) do use GPA as a screening tool.</p>

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<p>I’ll say this, as a recent college graduate. I only borrowed $8,500 as an undergraduate student (and even that was more than I needed – I was on a full scholarship) and the same amount as a graduate student. With the interest earned from undergrad, I have roughly $18,500 in debt (my grad loans are subsidized). I am deliriously happy with this relatively small amount. I do not plan to borrow any more – I just finished my first year of grad school, and don’t anticipate needing any more – but I am happy with the knowledge that I can pay off this loan very comfortably in 10 years, and my goal is 5 years (and that’s very doable, too!)</p>

<p>I compare this experience with the experience of some of my close friends, who borrowed much more for undergrad and are a little stressed about what jobs they will choose when they graduate from graduate school, as our field (public health) doesn’t really pay much.</p>

<p>An $80,000 loan with a 6.8% interest rate and loan fees of 1% will require $930 every month for 10 years. Your total payments will be $111,593, with $31,593 of that being interest. They estimate that you will need a salary of over $111,000 to repay that, but honestly, I think you could live comfortably on less than $8,000 a month :smiley: But let’s say you get a job that pays $40,000 a year. After your loans, you’ll be left to live on around $2500. I’m doing that as a grad student and it kind of sucks, although I’m willing to do it for the Ph.D (and plus I live in New York, YMMV in other places). If you make any less than that you may run into financial difficulties.</p>

<p>You’re planning to be an engineer so you’ll probably make a bit more in your first job – maybe $55,000+? It would definitely be doable with that much, since even after your loan payments you’d still be having almost $4,000 every month to live on, which is pretty good for a new grad.</p>

<p>I agree with hmom5, though, that you could go to your local state university and pay in-state tuition and still get a good engineering education/degree. I disagree with the advice to try and rush to graduate in 3 years, though. There are many advantages, but stuff happens and sometimes you can’t (if you fail a class, for example, or want to study abroad or take an internship – or even if you just don’t want to take 5-6 classes in a very hard major).</p>

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<p>Just to give an update! I visited the Community College (Quinsigamond Community College) and it seemed that credits earned would at least be able to be transfered to Umass, or WPI. However, their Computer Science program will just start this fall (brand new)…so people were a little uncertain. However, I may schedule an appointment again with the Transfer Services. </p>

<p>A clear answer was not learned on RIT. And I will check on WPI regarding financial aid to transfers. </p>

<p>When I left, I sent an email to both my flagship (Umass Amherst) and RIT to see what placement rate and what the typical starting salary was for recent graduates in the last two years. RIT told me that their placement for Software Engineering roughly 90-100%, with students receiving job offers before graduation. The average starting salary was 65k with a range between 50-84k. </p>

<p>Umass has not replied to me yet. (And call I will not, last time I called them I received rather rude replies when inquiring about Engineering). Reason for Umass interest is that it is a more likely transfer. Although I absolutely hated their campus, I am there for my degree as first priority. I am sure I can find joy in anything. I am fortunate enough to love programming.</p>

<p>However- with the placement rate as high as it is, with the starting salary being somewhat reassuring- I have decided to purse further education at RIT. The Computer Science program at CC is too new with too many uncertainties regarding credits. I don’t want to spend too much money (or borrow), but I do not want to throw water in the lake either. Although, I am still weighting options. It is an acutely difficult decision for me to make. </p>

<p>@ those suggesting local state universities: They cost roughly the same as RIT.</p>

<p>Thank you for all your input! It has been wonderful to hear other peoples opinions and advice on reducing costs. It has really added different perspectives! :-)</p>