<p>I think the point, cptofthehouse, is that an internship in graphic design would be unpaid or low-paying - which wouldn’t allow the young man in the story to pay off his student loan debt.</p>
<p>To post #2 or #3 - What is a “big box U”? I see that phrase thrown around a lot as if public universities were like Wal-Marts, soulless copies of one another that are all the same. Not all public universities are created equal. Some are small and some are large. Students who don’t want to go to U Mass-Amherst (21,000+ undergrads) may prefer U-Mass-Boston (11,000 undergrads), Bridgewater State University (9,000 undergrads), Salem State University (8,000 undergrads), Framingham State university (4,000 undergrads), or the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (1,721 students). Tuition & fees at all of these publics is less than $8,000 a year for in-state students, with the exception of U-Mass Boston where it’s $10,000. SAT scores of admitted students at these schools are either average or slightly above average.</p>
<p>I’m not convinced that because a student doesn’t want to go to, or isn’t well fit for, a large public university means that they have to take on big debt to go to an expensive private. Those are luxuries, for the people who can afford them or who get great financial aid (or maybe who saved well). I suspect that the overwheling majority of undergraduates will do just fine at their state public. And there are private schools that are cheaper than the 100 that tend to get thrown around this site a lot.</p>
<p>As far as take-out coffees, a cappucino from Starbacks costs around $3.50. If you drink one every day 5 days a week, you’re spending $70 a month, or $840 a year. That will pay a student health service fee or for some books. Even if you only drink it twice a week, that’s still $336 over the course of a year that you could save, when a bag of good coffee can cost you $12 and last you for far longer.</p>
<p>But I don’t think the point is that coffee alone will pay for tuition - the point is, being frugal and cutting out those unnecessary things can add up and help you save money. Cable being a big thing - as a doctoral student not only does cutting out cable save me a tremendous amount of money, it also means I’m not gonna get distracted by flipping on the television.</p>
<p>As to the person asking about grad school…another option is looking into the offerings at your local public university. I’m of the opinion that in a lot of fields (education, nursing, social work, etc.), the prestige of your degree doesn’t matter much, but the fact that you have one - and the license - does. I think that’s even true for medical school, unless you want to teach or do research in medicine. You don’t have to go to a prestigious medical school in order to get a license to practice as a doctor and set up a private practice, join a group practice, or even work at a clinic like Kaiser. Two examples of good public medical colleges I can think of are SUNY Downstate and the Medical College of Georgia. The in-state tuition at both of these medical colleges is about 1/2 of what it is at big-name medical schools.</p>