<p>So I have my heart set on going to Colorado College this fall, but they gave me no financial aid, so I'd be paying $60,000+ a year and would be left in debt by the time I graduated. I could pay half the price to go to Puget Sound (they gave me a $20,000/yr scholarship), but I have visited and do not love the school. From what I understand, CC's academics are superior to Puget Sound's (I'm in love with the block plan), and the location is amazing. I feel at home at CC, so I just can't decide whether CC's various highlights are worth the extra $25k+ a year. Should I just suck it up and go to a school that is financially reasonable? Or go into debt for a school that I really love?</p>
<p>Any advice?</p>
<p>Colorado may be higher-ranked than UPS, but if you can’t afford Colorado then there’s no point in considering it.</p>
<p>Remember that college students themselves are limited to borrowing a total of $31,000 in federal loans. That’s $5,500 in your first year, $6,500 in your second year and $7,500 in your last two years. So you will not be able to borrow $60,000 - if they gave you zero aid, then you’d be left with $55,000 to cover.</p>
<p>Are your parents willing and able to cover the rest of that? If they’re not, then there’s little chance of you going to Colorado. The only way for you to get a larger private loan to cover the cost is if your parents co-signed, but hopefully they are unwilling to do that because $240,000 is far, far, FAR too much debt to take on for an undergraduate degree. There’s no way you’d ever be able to repay it, and I doubt that a bank would actually let you take on that much debt simply because they know the chances of you ever actually repaying it are slim.</p>
<p>At Puget Sound, if the cost to you is $30,000, that means that your parents have to cover $25,000 a year. That might be more doable for them.</p>
<p>Ok so I decided on Colorado College, and I’m very happy with my decision. After discussing it a lot with my mom, we agreed that, of all the investments we could make, this one is an extremely important one. I don’t know how much we’ll owe by the time I’m done, but we’re guessing about 30-40k, which is manageable. She wants me to go to CC as much as I do, and I just could not imagine myself at Puget Sound(personally). We even appealed to CC for more money, but they didn’t give us any :(, so they seem to think we’ll manage. It’s hard to know now if we made the right decision, but so far, I have no regrets, and am proud to call myself a tiger!</p>
<p>if your debt is indeed in the 30-40k (essentially only a little above the federal loan limit) yes it’d be manageable.
CONGRATULATIONS and don’t forget to look for jobs to help your family.</p>