<p>Your daughter can take out $27K in Direct loans. With interest accruing on the non subsidized portion of those loans, she will be about $30K in debt upon graduation. Where are you thinking she will be getting more loan money? From Perkins loans? Has Case offered them up to her? They are not guaranteed year to year, prices go up at colleges, and most colleges expect the student to take on a bigger hunk of the cost each year. Even Harvard does. Upperclass housing usually costs a lot more because the kids go into suites and apartments instead of the old freshman dorm doubles. </p>
<p>Both the premed and engineering majors have a huge drop out rate, especially from those kids not prepared by not so rigorous high schools, I went to such a college and there is no mercy. Those “spoiled brats”, “silver spoon” kids who went to the most rigorous high schools and took the AP courses and didn’t use the test scores to move up in the classes, but repeated them blasted everyone out of the water. It’s just a fact of life. Yes, some beat those odds, like my husband did, but the stats are against you. Not saying this to be a downer. It’s just the facts. It’s good to keep your mind open about this and have options if your student decides not to go STEM or premed, or the grades make that decision for her. </p>
<p>The thing is, you will likely have to take out those loans, not her. So, you’d better start looking at HELOCs right now if she is heading off to Case. I know dozens, yes, dozens of Case kids who did not do so hot in their STEM programs and some lost their merit money due to performance. Not as bad as it used to be–they had to lower the standards because so many kids were losing their merit scholarships and parents and schools were giving Case bad press–this was some years ago. </p>
<p>The kids I do know who went to Case and did complete the engineering program on heavy duty loans, and I do know a number of them too. (I lived in Cleveland for a number of years, know a lot of former Case students), all found themselves side by side at their jobs with kids who went to state schools, all kinds of directional type schools, no name schools getting paid the same amount The difference was that a lot of them did not have a loan payment and those Case kids who paid that premium had to pay it back. This is a reality that my kids are living right now. They may have had their tough times, but they at least did not have school loans and their peers who do are really having a tougher time. Very difficult to pay for something that is a done deal when you are struggling to move ahead and you are around others who do not have that loan monkey on their backs. My son who does have a high paying job is like the king in his group as he has no loans plus a paid off car. A lot of those working with him have school loans, car payments AND they have had to incur credit card debt for starting up in their career. And this is a group of kids earning engineer like salaries. It’s not easy out there.</p>
<p>Med school–well, she’d likely to have to borrow for that. I truly know very, very few kids who got a phd/md type mix. It’s getting very difficult to get PHD programs that pay fully anymore as it is. They hedge their bets. Money is short everywhere. And the thing is, though she will be able to put off paying her loans while in grad/prof/med school, the interest just keeps right on churning. She’s going to owe a lot more than $30K that she will owe at minimum with interest upon undergrad completion when she finishes med or any other prof or phd program. THose interest rates, by the way, are not as favorable as the current DIrect Loan ones, and are not subsidized while in school as some of the DL ones can be during the ug years. </p>
<p>So it’s up to you and how much YOU want to lay on the line for your daughter Don’t put it on her. She’s only a teenager.</p>