I have an offer for the MALD degree at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, a top 5 international affairs school in USA. I know the school is very good but I will have to borrow $50,000 in loans. Is it worth that much debt?
I am an international student and will be allowed to stay in USA on OPT for 1 year. After that, there is no guarantee on H1B visa. It is very tough to repay a loan in dollars if I earn in my home country currency should I not be allowed to stay in USA.
However, the Fletcher School has been my dream school for many years now. It has the exact combination of subjects I want to study such as Development Economics, Social Entrepreneurship and International Political Economy. Plus, students can take some classes at Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School of Government, which sounds very attractive to me.
I would feel very, very happy to attend, especially since I suffered severe depression for many years, the news about acceptance into my dream school Fletcher did much to ease my depression. I am only wondering whether it will be worth the loan, keeping in mind the post-study work visa issue and I will be owing $50,000 in debt.
I also have an offer to study International and Development Economics at a top Australian University, where the debt will be half: $25,000 and Australia allows international students to work for two years so I will recover the investment before coming back to my home country. My head says Australia is a good bet but my heart says Fletcher.
I mean, it’s really hard to tell, right? There’s no real way to answer this question upfront.
For an American citizen with very little undergrad debt, borrowing $50K to attend Fletcher wouldn’t necessarily be a bad investment. A Fletcher grad could probably expect to make at least around $50-60K upon graduating, meaning that they could theoretically repay their loans without much financial hardship. (Fletcher itself reports that the average salary of its class of 2015 was just under $58K in the public sector and just under $88K in the private sector.) They also tend to get jobs - 95% of Fletcher grads had secured employment within 6 months of graduation.
An additional note - 42% of Fletcher graduates are non-U.S. citizens. So it seems that Fletcher grads are successful in getting employment regardless of whether they are from the U.S. or not. However, Fletcher doesn’t fully report WHERE all these graduates got jobs; it’s possible that a substantial portion of the international students returned to their home countries or worked elsewhere outside of the United States.
I’d say the odds are probably in your favor if you went to Fletcher, but there’s no 100% guarantee. You could talk to an admissions or career counselor at Fletcher - explain your concerns. They probably keep more robust data on where international students go to work after they finish, and might be able to give you a more detailed breakdown of the percentage of international students (and maybe even international students from your country specifically) who go to work in the United States or another developed country where the local currency would enable you to repay your loans.
But still, no guarantees…just additional information that may help you weigh your choices better.
I will note that many programs like to advertise that students “can” take classes in other schools at the university or even other nearby universities…even when very few students actually can or do take advantage of that ability, either because of cost, or the distance between the universities, or the incompatibility of schedules. So I’d ask that too.
Personally, it sounds like the Australian program is the better bet here.