Damn Student Loans

It's Friday afternoon, nabisco. And I'm not an argumentative person. I'm sorry if I upset you. I suppose I do get a bit jealous of the very wealthy. As my mom always says, 'Life's not fair.'

Sarah: I should also probably explain where I'm coming from with this. I was lucky enough to finish high school in a state with good public schools: I could have gone to the University of Michigan for free, saving myself and my family loads of money and coming out without an ounce of debt. I often think I should have done that. But I went to an expensive private school instead and have come out saddled with debt. I try not to complain too much about that debt because I made, at some point, a decision that it was worth it for the benefits of attending that expensive private school, a decision I'm hoping will turn out looking like the right one. And yeah, half of the people I know from school just had their tuitions paid flat-out by family and don't have to worry about any of this, but if I let this bother me very much I'd have put a gun to my head before I was done with my freshman year.

In my case, the benefits of going to the expensive private school aren't actually that huge, name-wise: the University of Michigan is a good enough school that having Northwestern on my diploma instead actually isn't conferring that huge of a boost to my prospects. (Not like, say, Indiana vs. Harvard or something.) I do think the federal aid system needs to move in the direction of recognizing that an education at a selective school really is substantially more valuable than the equivalent education at a state school, which it does in part now but not nearly as much as I think any of us would like. On the other hand, making sure everyone who merits admission to an Ivy can afford it doesn't actually correct this problem. What would correct it, as mentioned, would be a much greater investment in raising the standards of state schools and the numbers of good ones. People wouldn't need or even want to beg for enough aid to afford a luxury school if the bulk of them had decent state schools available to them. (Move to Michigan, everyone!)

If anyone does have some good advice for me on how to get any help with this, please email me? I mean, I reckon I can get through the year-of-dependence, as I've decided just now this is called, but it's just looming over my head, the fact that I don't really know how to do anything at this point, I feel my hands are tied. Any non-govermental loan pointers or tips, etc. would be appreciated muchly.

I was apologizing to keep this a discussion rather than a catty insulting argument, but hey, no luck there. "Heaven forbid" you take a fucking apology in kind.

My point's simply that it's alloted based on what you or "your family" can afford; the more you have, the less you get.

I'm not following, nabisco -- if it's something obvious, blame the heavy drinking I've done today/tonight. Not everyone who went to Hampshire was a wealthy kid -- the ones who got the major aid, for instance, weren't. Hampshire's essential approach was to sprinkle small amounts of work-study over a large portion of the student body, and then to take a small number of kids from non-wealthy families and give them full- or close-to-full scholarships. That way they could point both to "oh, 75% of our students have financial aid" and "we gave out such-and-such number of full scholarships last year," even while the bulk of the student body was paying tuition, room, board, and expenses out of pocket.

It's a large reason why the freshman attrition rate was as high as two-thirds.

no offense, Nabisco, I like you and yer posts generally ... but the above is pretty darn ignorant. the above is only true only if you went to one of the top law schools (like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or Chicago) -- if you went anywhere else, and didn't graduate in the top 10% of yer class and/or got onto law review, the law firms that pay top dollar nowadays will tell you to go pound sand. i went to an OK public law school, did OK but not spectacular (i.e., graduated top half of class and made a journal), graduated when the market was still hot, i didn't get a job with any Wall Street/Big Law firm, and i don't make anywhere near what folks in those firms make. nor do most freshly-minted attorneys.

While I was earning my economics degree, for the first two years of my college education, I went to a private, "well-regarded" university (I don't know how truly well-regarded it is -- it was Trinity University, fyi). Then, when the loans multiplied so scarily fast that I didn't see myself catching up to them in the five year period I had set up at the beginning, and when my dad's health started deteriorating to the point where I was starting to be responsible for a hell of a lot of things, I finished up my degree at a public university (the University of Texas at San Antonio). Well, what I found was that the education I got at the private institution was really not that top-notch, and I actually had better professors, better facilities, and a generally better education at the public university.

Just to break it all down to you: The tuition at the private university I was attending was $20,000/year. I got a scholarship at the end of my high school career that covered half that tuition, while a series of loans I took out paid for the rest. It's simple math really -- I owed $20,000 by the time I transfered to a public university. Tuition at the public university was $2,000/year. In exchange for taking special care of my father, my parents paid for the tuition as we went along (and my family's not wealthy -- we're probably on the borderline between "working class" and "middle class", so it's not as though I was being spoiled by this, and besides, I decided to be a commuter student because I had to stay in a dorm for the first year of college and it sucked).

I have a job that could be considered a career now, so with the money I'm earning I can pay off my student loans and help out with utilities around the house. (I'm still living here because my mother certainly couldn't take care of my father alone and I'm not about to do what's expected of me by society and leave my parents in the lurch. Besides, it allows me to save bigtime money-wise and thus be able to tackle my student loans, which in just one year are already halfway paid off.) What I'm discovering right now, being Out There in the Real World, is that most employers don't really care that much where you graduate from. What they look for is whether the school's accredited by the usual suspects, what your GPA is/was, what your extracurricular activities was (so thank God my private university had us do volunteer work and my public university had a couple of organizations I got involved with). I know that when the HR director at my job looked at my collegiate history, she was more impressed with my GPA than with my choice of college.

I think that if you're looking out for your finances while you pursue the dream of higher education, you should stick with a good public university or a less expensive private university, and make sure you get really good grades. Then, when finding a place of employment, search for one that will pay for a graduate education, and go to a good school then. I'm going with a degree that has more of a chance to earn me more money and that I somehow feel is more suited to me (the computer science degree), but while I'm an undergrad I'm quite happy to go to a public university. However, it would be very nice to earn my master's at MIT or Stanford, so that's what I'll be angling for, and I'm convinced I will be able to swing it when the time comes. Hopefully my mother can come with me wherever I go, so I can help take care of her (her health is fairly bad, too).

Or you could take out multiple loans to go to wherever you want to go to. Whichever, really. It depends on how much you want to work to get your degree. And believe me, those people who goof off during college and don't take education seriously will really suffer in the long run. As one of my old advisors said, "You can either choose to have fun for four years and work hard for the rest of your life, or work hard for four years and have fun for the rest of your life."

I really can't contribute anything to this discussion in practical terms -- my parents set aside college money for me starting at birth, and a combination of regular payments to the fund and some shrewd investing meant my entire experience at UCLA was paid for and then some, as I also received some academic scholarships as well. My graduate experience was covered by a four-year fellowship that handled all costs and guaranteed TA work as well; it was when this ended, in combination with other reasons, that I realized the academic life just wasn't one for me, and so I left rather than accumulate debt in pursuit of something that was driving me nuts. I may not be getting the high-flying job or anything, but I am comfortable, I can indulge myself as needed and I have no debt hanging over my head from schooldays -- but I also realize that this was initially as a result of a combination of particular factors that I had no control over, and I am grateful for it. Some of the stories I've read here just plain anger me, the more so because people I consider friends are suffering as a result.

At any length... *hugs*, and Ned, your parents were s-m-a-r-t.

Delurking a bit more now, obv.

I think student loans suck ass in general. Only if you pay more than what the statements say you owe can you actually find anything advantageous about them.

I didn't qualify for jack when it came to financial aid the first go around. All I had to pay the tuition were my scholarship and the loans I took out. I found that only the super-poor and those who knew how to work the system (e.g. lying on their tax returns) got all the benefits. Maybe some of you who've posted before could've qualified for a lot more than what you're getting. Ally, you seem to me to be an individual who would qualify for tons of stuff, if not now, then a bit later. There are tons of scholarships out there -- get someone in the financial aid office on your side! I had a good friend in financial aid who found for me some loans with low interest rates. (It was the best she could do for me at the time.)

I'm not bitter about any of it, though. I value my education now, and would choose a degree over no loans any day of the week.

*hugs to everyone*

I must confess that my parents had a college fund for me too, but they blew it all on furniture when I was 6. Oh, we'll pay it back some day. And then they got a divorce. So, maybe if they hadn't bought that furniture and had stayed together, I would have been one of those kids whose parents paid their way. Life's just funny like that.

So, whatever else you do, I'd say pay them as much as you possibly can while you're attending. It also made me study much harder as screwing up a class doesn't seem real practical when you know that each class session is actively costing you two hundred and fifty dollars.

I've deferred the hell out of mine. Course, all I want to do is keep consolidation, then give them a huge check. While watching their faces drop in shock.

i know it has been a long time ago, but as i read your comments,i
think back when my husband and i first started. we thought when
we finally made 10k a year, we were rich. i wish we had the opportunites that you young people have today. the information is
out there, read, research, talk to successful people. own up to
your responsibilites. you made the debt, pay it. stop whinning.

does "refinancing" just mean getting a consolidation loan? If you do this, can you still defer if you lose your job? who is the best person to do this through, or are they all basically the same (ie: what is the difference b/w salle mae, direct loans (government run) and collegeloans.com?)

sorry for all the questions.

My loans are gonna default in a few weeeks because then it will be 270 days past due.

dude get one (1) forbearance, otherwise it'll be a pain in the ass

i don't think you can get a forebearance for longer than 6 months

Not true at all -- there are lots of forbearance types, lots of them up to 12 months, depending on your lender.

I doubt Ian would be sharing this bummer if he hadn't exhausted most of the obvious options, so there's not much to say except that that REALLY sucks, and I'm REALLY sorry...

...but on the other hand, dude, don't let it happen! Defaulting on a student loan will screw you thoroughly and for a long time, practically like a minor bankruptcy. Like potential wage-garnishing, can't get certain jobs in certain states, credit-fucked, can't apply for loans for any future schooling, government won't give you any money (even your tax refunds), royally screwed, PLUS -- more serious than any of that -- you'll suddenly owe the entire balance of your loans on a pay-right-now COLLECTION basis, so in addition to the original credit-screwing, you'll also have collection agencies calling you up and demanding what I assume will be thousands of dollars on the spot.

That probably doesn't help with the bummer, so, you know ... that so sucks!

Okay, but dude: seriously, spend every second of the next two weeks bugging and begging the crap out of everyone involved to avoid it! They're actually pretty helpful with keeping you from defaulting, in part because they don't want to sell your debt at a loss, and in part because the law makes them be. So:

1) go after ANY forbearance time you have left, even if it's only a few months -- that still sets back the clock on default
2) see if you have any options with consolidating the debt off to another lender, even if it's kind of a crap deal -- you're WAY better off starting over on worse terms than defaulting! and I'm guessing your mailbox is stuffed full of offers: check to see if any of them aren't too skeezy
3) your mailbox is probably also full of letters from student assistance non-profits. call every one of them and see what they can do for you.

Honestly, if you set aside a weekday and spend the entire day on the phone calling everyone you possibly can ... you will spend a lot of time on hold and maybe have to swallow a shit interest rate, but I'm pretty confident you can keep from defaulting! Just don't get all stressed out and figure you're screwed -- I've kinda screwed myself up assuming that in the past, but if you just keep on everyone's ass, you can get out of it.

P.S. Thank you for reminding me to double-check that my stuff is in order!

PPS -- Sorry, I said COLLECTION agencies, but that may not actually be true, and instead you will have THE GOVERNMENT on your ass about this stuff. I do not know exactly how it works, and I don't ever want to know exactly how it works, and I don't ever want YOU to know how it works, seriously.

ian: IF you can, can you make at least ONE payment to them by the deadline? i am not entirely sure if this is so, but if you can do that then that MAY delay the loan servicer from defaulting (for another month, perhaps).

nabisco... (you guessed it) otm!

there is usually something you can do. if you call them and explain and show that you would like to work something out so they eventually get paid, they should work with you. i don't have firsthand experience with this exact situation, but i think they are generally willing to help when you step forward and ask what you can do to keep this from getting worse.