If a parent doesn’t want to co-sign a grad student loan…that’s their right and the student would be wrong to feel entitled to demand their parents reconsider once it’s decided.
$150k is around the cost of attending law school for 3 years at a public university. Private university law school attendance cost tends to start at ~$180k.
Not sure I’d necessarily agree if the following factors are concerns for a given parent:
- Student coasted through undergrad high GPA from taking mostly gut courses.
- Student didn't shadow/intern/work at a firm and most of his/her ideas about a Legal Career from shows like Law & order and The Practice.
- Parents have serious concerns about whether their child has the level of work ethic, internal stamina, resilience to withstand working 70-90+ hour workweeks endemic to many areas of the legal profession...especially long enough to pay off those law school loans. Knew of a couple of first-year associates from schools in the Columbia/NYU/UChicago level who quit before the first year of being associates at a Biglaw firm ended because they were fed up with working 70-80 hour workweeks which was expected if one was even halfway serious about making partner at that or peer firms firm.
Part of the reason for posting this bit is from knowing a few Columbia law graduates who had serious issues with heavy law school loan debt and having serious issues landing a reasonably paying job to defray those loans because they happened to graduate in the bottom third of their graduating law class in the midst of the 2008 recession and the implosion of the legal industry…including a few prominent biglaw firms. .