Decision Time: UNLV, SDSU or UNR?

MYOS1634
Sun, 23 Mar 2014 01:04:32 +0000

@BrownParent: some universities actually pretend to package financial aid by inserting PLUS loans in it! GRRRRRRRR

@DjBoom77:
Can you do it again and give us the numbers like this for each possibility (with 000 if the line is irrelevant)
Tuition
Room&Board
Commuting costs
Miscellaneous (books, etc)

Scholarships/grants
Federal subsidized and unsubsidized loans
PLUS Loans
Work Study
Other

Parent PLUS loans are taken by PARENTS. So your parents have to submit documentation and be accepted for it every year. The problem is that some parents qualify one year, then don’t, and the student ends up being stuck and having either to commute or even transfer. Your parents are likely to have $200 monthtly payments starting Spring of your freshman year, which will double if they’re approved for a second year loan, and triple if they’re approved for a third year loan, etc. and they will then pay for about 10 years.
They are NOT financial aid and, yourself, can’t sign for them. Only your parents can.

Subsidized and unsubsidized loans are loans you take on yourself. They’re subsidized or at least guaranteed by the government. Everyone, at every college, is entitled to them. For freshman year, you’ll get a total of $5,500. Then you’ll get $6,500. Then junior and senior year each you’ll get $7,500, for a total of $27,000, which is the maximum you can borrow for 4 years and the maximum a college graduate can hope to be able to pay back. (Even that much proves difficult for many students).

UNR is the better school and the cost differential makes it the better choice over UNLV on-campus… but it seems that if your parents won’t pay their EFC and if all you have in your financial aid package is loans, commuting to UNLV may be the only choice. And even that depends on your getting a job (theamounts you listed are after Millenial Scholarships/or UNR’s freshman scholarship but before the federal loans, right? Or did you factor those in?)

If those are your only possibilities, then you may have to take a gap year, or go to community college. Another alternative is to apply to colleges that still accept applications, many of them are pretty good and mustn’t be used to applications from Nevada so you’d bring geographical diversity, it may help.
Those schools are pretty good and include Albion, Hiram, Hendrix…

I wouldn’t be going on a vacation this summer… you’ll be expected to work to pay your student contribution.