These loans no longer exist.
You, as a student, are allowed 5.5k in federal loans, that’s it. Anything else has to be taken by your parents - either from federal “Parent Plus” (which may disappear) or as private co-signed loan by your parents (meaning they’ll have to pay back while you’re in med school). In addition, with the newly-enacted lifetime cap, taking loans for undergrad means not being able to pay for grad or med school.
Please run the NPC on a couple colleges with your parents
- so that they see how much costs have increased (assuming early to mid 90s, when they went to college, Harvard tuition was in the low 20s and public instate tuition in the 4-8k range; total cost of attendance would currently be around 90k and 30-35k respectively. As a result, it was possible to “work your way through college” with a loan and a part-time job back then.. but it isn’t feasible nowadays.)
- to see if you’d be eligible for financial aid at generous meet-need colleges.
- BTW they will need to fill out FAFSA for you to get the federal loans (5.5k).
45mn commute on a train one way would be my upper limit.
In addition, you don’t go back and forth! The issue is what you’re missing while commuting and while at home.
You can’t really compare with Europe, where the library closes at 7pm most days, everything is set up with the university being just one small part of the experience with the city the main option (for food, studying, sports, socializing) and there is no expectations wrt research, ECs, study groups, etc. In the US, these outside activities tend to be crucial to a student’s professional future. So hopefully OP can earn enough merit scholarships between the STEM scholarship he already qualifies for and any other special program he may apply to or be invited to, to live on campus at a SUNY, or at an OOS university with a full ride for NMSFs.
CUNYs are set up for commuters (99+% students commute on the subway) and some students may even get a free subway pass as part of financial aid. So, if OP lives near NYC, attending a CUNY wouldn’t put him as a disadvantage as a commuter.