Define low paying @gearmom
My husband hires entry level civil engineers…pay is about $48,000 to start. In CT which isn’t a cheap place to live.
They get a raise after six months…if they work out.
@twoinanddone Here are the stats. http://www.mtu.edu/engineering/outreach/welcome/salary/
In comparison to some other engineering fields they are lower. They are not the only one. But you are not making the salary of a CE or ChemE or Mining E to pay off that whopping debt. The national average is 89k for Civil E. That is what our local teachers make.
I agree with other comments. This is way too much. There are many ways that this could go very bad, and virtually no chance at all that it would work out well.
So I’m just going to put this out there. UND would cost about 60k for a degree instate with good grades. UMN is 100k and UW-M is 160k. UND has some high paying engineering fields: Chem E, Geological E, Petroleum E. (certainly not every college even had GE or PE) So from a financial POV if you took Geological at UND for 60k and then made a high GE salary, that would be a big win financially. Of course you have to be happy in your life but as a financial opportunity UND certainly offers that.
My daughter is getting more than that, in a much lower COL area. Good benefits too. Her grades are good, not 4.0, but she has very little experience having only done one summer internship.
There are civil engineering jobs out there, but they might be where the recruits don’t want to live. I’ve heard of new engineers unwilling to leave Vermont or Connecticut having trouble finding jobs. Be flexible.
I admit that the ChemE grads are getting more, but they might have to live in Louisiana or Oklahoma.
It’s not worth it for $160k unless you can get a gov’t job, make payments for 10 years and apply for student loan forgiveness. Then you have to count the loan amount forgiven as income on your taxes that year. You’ll probably have to pay the tax on it, unless you can get that forgiven too.
My house cost $158,000 in 1989.
It came with a THIRTY YEAR MORTGAGE.
I would seriously rethink this plan!!!
You can’t borrow $160,000 on your own. You can only take the ~$5500/year federal student loan.
If you work summers, you can probably raise $3k. That gives you $8k. If you’re low income, you may qualify for a Pell Grant of up to $5900. Can your parents contribute anything? Do you have any options that don’t require more than the federal loans?
Prestige is an emotion that has no rational or financial basis to justify its existence. You need to rethink your options. Even if you managed to get the loans to cover those costs, you would never be able to afford the payments. That kind of debt would be hard even for a lawyer.
Here’s a life lesson 
A broken car or a major injury are rare events. In life, different “rare” events seem to happen every few months in varying intensity. It’s like a government conspiracy. Those are things you have to be financially prepared for. What you don’t want is an extra $1300 student loan payment, when you have unexpected life expenses. These are things like paying a homeowners insurance deductible for a flooded basement, medical bills for baby #1 who came a month premature, a broken leg from putting up Christmas lights. Just last year, we had to replace our carpet with laminate floors because our new puppy ruined it. This came after a thunderstorm destroyed our fence and our roof. Even after the insurance, that renovation costs us $10,000.
I see this on a major lender’s site, a bank with a student loan type program:
“Variable interest rates range from 4.34% APR (with discount) to 10.30% APR (without discount). Fixed interest rates range from 5.94% APR (with discount) to 11.26% APR (without discount).” (Maybe there’s better, but I’m not looking for it. OP should.)
Ugh. So I ran a repayment calculator and at 5%, 160k is $1700/mo, for ten years. Cumulative payments (incl a whopping 43k in interest) are 203.6k.
A higher interest rate or longer payment period only makes it worse.
Read up on how fin aid works. Be savvy. That includes: be practical.
$160K student loan is not worth it anywhere. There is a stat they says not to have 4 years of student loans that exceed your anticipated first year’s salary. I know it’s hard to think 15, 20, 25 years down the road from now. But $160K in student loan debt, no matter when you pay it off, will be effect you forever. And not in a positive way no matter how much you love UW Madison.
Huge debt ruins lives. Not only financially, but in your relationships now and in the future. It will prevent you from being living the life you want to. You will be accumulating lots of other debt for your entire life after college, too. Home, car, medical expenses and so on. Please take some time and really think about the life you want after college. What do you see yourself doing? Who is in your life? What kind of relationship do you have with your significant other? Do you have a dog or cat? What does your first apartment and later, house or condo look like? What kind of furniture and landscaping? I know it may sound silly. Also, read Frank Bruni’s book “Where You Go To College is Not Who You’ll Be”. Best of luck to you!
Please do not go into this much debt for a bachelor’s degree. I had someone working for me several years ago that went to a decent, although not spectacular, school and had OVER $100K in debt! It prevented that newlywed from buying a house, starting a family, etc. and had a major impact on her life. Crazy if you have other more affordable options!
You can’t afford that level of debt. Even if you could take out that amount of debt, graduating with $100,000 or so in student loans would handcuff your life decisions for 20+ years after graduation. The large payments you would have to make to cover the payments of your undergraduate loans would interfere with every adult decision you make – it would mean you probably couldn’t take that amazing job at a start-up for less pay, get that new car, take a nice vacation, get the home you want etc. Find an affordable option.