Federal loans, what??

AstroDav
Thu, 05 Aug 2010 01:35:15 +0000

I think every potential student needs to make a list of about 20 colleges that would fit their educational needs. The very first one should be either the most EXPENSIVE one they would consider … or the one they WANT to attend, i.e. their “Dream School”. 90% of the time, the same school would be at the top of this list. Most all of us want to attend that real prestigious school that every HS Senior lusts over … Harvard,Yale, MIT, whatever. Those “sexy” schools are almost always the most expensive ones.

Now is where the list developes. Next school down should be one that is a couple thousand $$'s cheaper than #1. Below that, #3 on the list will be a couple thousand cheaper still. Continue this until you get way down to the very cheapest school you can find, which is still well-known to provide a quality education. Those type ARE out there. Usually they are the public institutions, state universities, or the “work schools”. More than 1 school can share the same position on the list, as long as they cost about the same. And most important to remember, we aren’t looking for just the schools we WANT to go to … but rather the ones that will prepare us for whatever career we are intending to pursue. We might have to make some compromises between tuition cost & where we would like to go.

When done, our list will most likely have our “Dream-School” siting way up there at top, ironically in the most expensive location on the list. In the middle of the list will be schools that are in the, “Well, it’s okay. I could probably get use to it” group … and these will most likely be about 1/2 the price of that one at very top. And way down at bottom will be 3 or 4 schools which we haven’t even bothered to visit the web-site of yet. We didn’t do that because we were too busy salivating over the web-site of School #1. But these last few will have a tuition cost that is a FRACTION of that “brand name” school at top. But remember, these aren’t “junk” schools. When we were putting the list together, we carefully researched them to make sure each school would give us whatever education we have in mind.

And now comes the last & least fun part of all. Figure out, to the best of our knowledge, how much financial aid we can expect at each school on the list. Subtract that from the full tuition & we have the actual cost of attending each school (approximate cost anyway). That’s how much we’ll need to borrow … and eventually pay off, most likely within about 10 years or so at the most. Then, once again being as close & realistic as possible, figure out the maximum amount of money that we CAN afford to pay off. For 90% of us, not being rich, it WON’T be school #1 on the list.

So we’ll just have to work down the list until we find 3 or 4 schools which fit into that price-range. THESE are the ones to concentrate on. Once again we see that word “compromise” pop up. For the vast majority of us, when it comes to college, what we WANT isn’t going to be the same as what we CAN. But if we did our research correctly, we’ll still wind up with an excellent education, which will work on any possible resume we present in the future.

It’s much better to get a quality education, have manageable debts, while attending a college that we like … than it is to get a quality education, have debts that might lead us into bankruptcy, because we attended a college that we LOVED.