<p>Should I attend UF with no debt or Wake Forest with ~$25,000 in loans upon graduation. If it helps, I currently plan to go to medical school, but who knows what will come in the next 4 years. </p>
<p>Personal experience would be appreciated.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>If there’s a possibility that you’ll go to med school, I’d go the “no debt” route. You’ll need your borrowing power for med school.</p>
<p>$25k may not sound like a lot, but it will be a much larger number by the time you graduate from med school and start paying it back (along with your med school loans.)</p>
<p>The max Stafford loans that you can borrow for undergrad/med school is $224k. You’ll need ALL of that for med school.</p>
<p>Your saying I will need $224k to borrow for med school? From the looks of it, instate tuition at UNC Chapel Hill med school is $11,000. Would it not be realistic to borrow that as well as the undergrad loans?</p>
<p>Uhhh…</p>
<p>The in-state Cost of Attendance for UNC-CH med school is $42,674 (that is for the current school year - by the time you’re in med school, expect the COA to be well over $50k)</p>
<p>never look at just the tuition for med school. Med school has high supplies costs, high book costs, plus of course room, board, etc.</p>
<p>Besides, you have no guarantees that you’ll be admitted to UNC-CH.</p>
<p>BTW…are you in-state for Florida or NC? If you’re in-state for NC, how do you get to go to UF for free? Pre-paid plan?</p>
<p>I recommend racking up enormous debt for undergrad before going to med school, right after developing a crippling drug problem and streaking across the White House lawn. </p>
<p>Seriously, don’t. Law school, med school… they’re all super-expensive and if you squander your borrowing power at an expensive undergrad when you don’t have to then you’ll have much less money and / or more unfavorable loan conditions when you really don’t want that.</p>
<p>I actually found UNC-CH’s cost of attendance for last year, I think [right</a> here](<a href=“http://studentaid.unc.edu/cost/ssa_gr_general.html]right”>http://studentaid.unc.edu/cost/ssa_gr_general.html). Basically, you’re looking at over $15k (assuming you are in-state and living at home), to about $42k (Assuming you are out-of-state and living on campus). Per year, that’s pretty overwhelming and if you have $25,000 previous loan it might be doable but it’s definitely pushing it.</p>
<p>Well just out of curiosity, do you have any idea what the average debt of a doctor is upon graduation from med school?</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>I’ll see if I can find that, but averages don’t tell the whole story. Some have families that help pay the debt. Some don’t need to borrow much because their families pay much up front. Some have big debt that negatively affects their lives…even tho they are doctors making good money. </p>
<p>Some mistakenly borrow too much for undergrad, and then have to resort to private bank loans to finish med school. Their debt can be absolutely choking and some still are paying on those debts into their 40’s!!! We’ve seen the stories here on CC, where parents are doctors still struggling with their med school debts so they can’t pay their kids’ EFCs.</p>
<p>Remember…newly minted MDs are not making big bucks.</p>
<p>Again, you have no guarantees of getting admitted to UNC-CH. I have a pre-med son. We are making sure he graduates from undergrad debt-free. We will help him with med school, but he’ll have to borrow some - depending on where he gets admitted.</p>
<p>Med school admittances can be funny. Two of my son’s friends got accepted to ivies for med school last year, but got rejected from their “cheap” instate med school (UAB). Go figure! UAB is a good med school, but it’s not an ivy! </p>
<p>Again…I’ll try to find the avg debt.</p>
<p>From the AMA…which I would think is a reliable source… :)</p>
<p>Medical Student Debt load at graduation.</p>
<p>Student debt statistics</p>
<p>$156,456 – According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the average educational debt of indebted graduates of the class of 2009.</p>
<pre><code>* 79 percent of graduates have debt of at least $100,000.
<p>For a profession other than medicine, would $25000 undergrad debt be acceptable or no?</p>
<p>ej…you need to look at ALL of your debt…not just undergrad. If you are planning a career in medicine, your debt will likely be high when you graduate. </p>
<p>My kids have the maximum Stafford loan debt from undergrad…about $18,000 and personally I wish they didn’t have THAT.</p>
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<p>That’s fairly high, but not uncommon. It really depends on the individual, though. The more debt you have, the more of your income you have to devote to paying it and the less discretionary income you have. The United States just passed legislation to cap the percentage of your income you’ll have to spend paying back your debt every month, but where ever that cap lies it’ll still be a relatively large chunk of money that you could spend on luxuries, a used car, a down payment on a house or apartment, med school, etc.</p>
<p>If you really like Wake Forest, one thing you might want to keep in mind is that getting a summer job might help alleviate the debt burden. Right now you’re looking at $25k in loans, but many schools will agree to reduce the loan part first of your financial aid package if you can replace some of it with loans. You don’t have to make a lot of money, but if you can knock out part or all of those unsubsidized Stafford loans that would really help you control your debt and still attend the college of your dreams! :D</p>
<p>I definately would go with University of Florida. Both are great schools. Each will fair well for one wanting to attend a top graduate school.</p>
<p>25k debt high? No way, though financial issues vary greatly family to family.,I know friends that had 50k a generation ago, and are very successful, and wouldn’t change a thing in regards to what they did…It really depends on what you major in , and how good you are in what you do…Best of luck!!!</p>
<p>Some other parents disagreed with me in the past 
But, from my very own experience, I owed about 3/4 of what my entry level salary was at the time. I didn’t feel any pain paying it back. I doubled my salary within five years, so the initial debt became even less of a burden. Of course, it’s best if you graduate debt-free, but there are cases where loans justify, even at a seemingly high amount. Think about your potential career when deciding how much you should borrow. Having said that, Wake vs. UF is rather an easy choice – go UF. I don’t see how you can justify going into debt for Wake.</p>
<p>Wake Forest is a top 30 school, why would you say “I don’t see how you can justify going into debt for wake”</p>
<p>Top 30 by whom? US News? How would that impact your medical school application? Or job seeking if you decide not to pursue medicine? I don’t know about the former, although I am told GPA and MCAT are the primary factors, but I do involve in recruiting from time to time. We don’t read US News to seek their wise counsel on what schools we should look for potential employees. In terms of college search, the rankings do provide a starting point, but it shouldn’t be end-all, be-all criteria in your evaluation. Personally, I feel you’d get a quality education from both places. What you make of it is more important than where you make of it in your stated career goal.</p>
<p>Well I am not going to choose a school based on it’s rankings obviously. The reason I am attracted to wake over uf is mostly the class size sitaution, on average something like 26 to 200+. So, as a recruiter, you don’t believe that wake has a great academic reputation?</p>
<p>I don’t know enough about UF’s class-sizes, but I’m guessing that the lower division lecture classes are large, labs are much smaller, BUT,…upper division classes are more “normal”. Would that be true? </p>
<p>I have no idea…I’m just guessing that based on my kids’ flagship class-sizes. Once they’re in upper division classes, the sizes are very “normal” (10 -40 kids). If that is so at UF, what are you concerned about?</p>