<p>Maybe one way to think about it is if you decide not to go to graduate school and got a job right out of college, what do you think your salary will be? Then find a tax calculator on the web which will estimate your take home pay for that salary. Then figure out what the interest rate would be on your loans and what your monthly payments would be after graduation. How much money would paying the loan back leave you with to live on each month? If it’s not much, then having a huge loan will affect every decision you will make for a long time regarding where to live, what job to take, etc. Unless you have no other good options on where to go to college, you may find taking out big loans to attend any school may impact your life too much to be worth it.</p>