I’m going into engineering and need to make a decisions soon. I will have about $38,000 debt at UCLA and $21,000 at UCI. I have no preference for either so are UCLA prestige, networking, and intern opportunities worth $17,000? My family doesn’t think so but most of my friends do.
Dependent students normally can only borrow up to $31,000 without a cosigner, so $38,000 debt would require parent loans or cosigned loans, which are typically not a good idea.