60K Debt for Duke?

happymomof1
Thu, 25 Apr 2013 19:57:33 +0000

" I plan on going to grad school in physics but I know that those are usually fully funded with stipends so cost shouldn’t be a factor right?"

If you get into grad school (and I know people who had to apply more than once to find a space in a Physics grad program), your stipend will be enough to live on in cheap off-campus housing and feed yourself ramen noodles. You will live like that for approximately seven years on your way to a PhD. After that you will get a small income boost if/when you land a post-Doc appointment which will mean that you can live in a slightly nicer neighborhood and can eat better food but you still won’t be raking it in, and that is when those loans will all land on your head because you probably won’t have been able to do more than defer them while working on the PhD. After three or four years as a post-Doc if you are lucky you will hang it up and go to industry and start making decent money. If you find yourself a faculty position you will get another upgrade in your housing and your diet, but it still won’t be comfortable and you still will be paying down all that debt when you’d rather be buying a decent car or a house or whatever. You will notice that on Big Bang, Dr. Cooper and Dr. Hofstadter are still in shared housing years after landing full-time work: part of that is because their salaries just aren’t that good.

So no, you do not want to do that to yourself. Try to like one of your more affordable options.