Is USC(Accounting) worth the cost/debt?

Guywhoflys
Wed, 02 Jul 2014 10:03:02 +0000

@seattletw or anyone else who wants to chime in, I have done some calculations and if I live at home, which is about a 25 minute commute to USC, it will cost me roughly $75,000 more than I would pay at Cal Poly Pomona(where I would be living on/within 5 minutes of campus) over the course of 2 and a half years. However, my Dad’s boss is a fan of USC, and upon hearing that I got in, offered a $7000 a year scholarship. So that brings my/my parents on top of Cal Poly Pomona cost to lets say about $55-60,000.

My parents were planning on taking out a home equity line of credit(have a very small mortgage from my dad buying the house in the 80’s that has now been rebuilt and is worth, well, alot) to cover whatever extra expense I have, and then sell off some various property to pay that off that later. The reason for doing this is because it would be the lowest interest rate we could get, and would be interest only payments until my parents pay off the principal later on. There’s no way my dad can pay via salary when there are my costs at USC and sister’s cost of attendance will be around 30k.

His boss has also offered to make a loan to us through his company to help us, which my parents will be discussing with them soon, but I would assume that their reason for offering this is to give us a lower interest rate than we can get from the bank, which when we went to the bank to talk seemed like we could probably get 3.75% for interest only payments.

Anyways so, similar to my original post, but with revised numbers/situation, is getting an undergraduate Business degree from Marshall or an Accounting degree from Leventhal(while having to live at home which is definitely not preferred but will be alright now that I’ve matured quite a bit and actually get along with my parents) worth the extra $60,000 which would likely be split close to evenly with my parents, probably leaving me with between 30-40k in loans. My parents would pay off the entire principal when they sell a property to get rid of the loan, and then I’d be paying them back whatever I owe but with no interest.

So for me it’s not a matter of can it be done, but more so should it be done? Am I better off having the USC brand name and connections I’ll make there while an undergrad, or should I try to save the money for some sort of grad school whether that means a masters in accounting or mba(which I am likely to get one or possibly even both depending upon what lies ahead, but the mba would be later on. one thing to note is that if I go to USC for an undergraduate degree it is unlikely I could afford to get an MAcc from there. Taking classes at a JC might also be an option, but I’d really want to see how employers feel about that route)

My neighbor says Deloitte paid for her masters in taxation at USC, but is this still done? In the mean time, I’ve talked to USC and they said I can go ahead and reserve a spot by paying my deposit, but if I decide it’s not going to work out financially, I can back out and will lose my deposit but will not be held financially responsible for anything else.