Brown/Princeton or UVA full ride?

charlieschm
Sat, 05 Nov 2011 22:39:24 +0000

Federally subsidized loans for most students are limited to around $25K for an undergrad degree. For most students, any loans above that amount are going to be much more expensive loans in which the interest starts to accumulate soon after you take out the loan.

Federal subsidized stafford loans are going up to 6.8% soon, and Perkins loans could disappear completely in 1.5 years if Congress does not re-fund them.

Generally, $25K of subsidized loans are reasonable for most students for a quality undergrad degree. However, the costs per month of the next $25K of non-subsidized loans may be much much higher than the cost of the first $25K of subsidized loans.

As noted above, it is valuable to save your debt capacity for graduate or professional school. Next year, the Federal government will stop providing subsidies of new loans for graduate and professional school.

At UVa, grad students mainly teach intro math and language classes. Their involvement keeps those class sizes small. In most other cases, the grad students only serve as TAs to professors, and the grad students run any smaller discussion sessions. UVa is working on hiring more professors, which will help to reduce class sizes.