Vanderbilt undergrad, graduating with 40k debt : worth it?

happymomof1
Fri, 10 Apr 2015 13:37:01 +0000

@cluelessinKS -

cptofthehouse and others have written here about the effects of parents taking on a lot of debt for kid#1 on the college options for kids #2, #3, etc. Sometimes kid#2 doesn’t mind at all and is happy with chasing a cheaper school, but sometimes this creates life-time resentments for kid#2. In almost every case, the parents have long-term feelings of guilt about short-changing kid #2. Since I don’t know your family’s details, I have no way of knowing how tight your college bills are going to make your family’s budget, whether paying off parent loans would be a big challenge for your parents, or if sending you to X would mean that your family would think it necessary to make the equivalent of X possible for your sibling six years from now and if that would make other aspects of your parents’ lives overly difficult. But this is something that you should explore with your parents, and possibly with your sibling.