A question for grad students......

[wacki]

When it comes to student loans, how screwed are you?

Cuz I'm [censored].

[Victor]

thats what poker is for.

[jason_t]

Remain a student for the rest of your life and you'll never have to pay them.

[BeerMoney]

[ QUOTE ]
When it comes to student loans, how screwed are you?

Cuz I'm [censored].

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess this isn't what you're looking to hear, but grad school is best done on an assistanceship.

[Michael Davis]

Study liberal arts. You could do it, and they pay for you if you have a good track record. Then work on effing it up (oops).

-Michael

[DemonDeac]

im not to worried about it. not in grad school yet, but will be in law school paying my way through. ill pay em off easily when i make 80 grand first year out.....bitches

[Victor]

[ QUOTE ]
im not to worried about it. not in grad school yet, but will be in law school paying my way through. ill pay em off easily when i make 80 grand first year out.....bitches

[/ QUOTE ]

80k aint shite on this forum. thats monthly income for some.

[MrWookie47]

Don't you get to defer until you've finished grad school? That's what I'm doing. I'll probably take it in the pooper as a postdoc, however. I guess that's what poker will be for.

[Brain]

Deferring is good. I only have one more semester left though. And it's only one class so I don't know if I'll even qualify as a half-time student.

[Brain]

And not too screwed, but it'll be nice when I'm done (in about forever).

[mike l.]

you can basically defer and avoid them forever. or pay very small monthly payments. i will be dead before i come even close to paying mine off.

[nothumb]

Forget grad school, I'm 20k in the hole just from undergrad, and I'm lucky not to be quite a bit deeper.

NT

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
Forget grad school, I'm 20k in the hole just from undergrad, and I'm lucky not to be quite a bit deeper.

NT

[/ QUOTE ]

My sister owes a quarter mil.

Med school

[Zeno]

Most have already noted about getting a deferral. This is legal and logical. There is usually a few months grace period after graduation but also if have no job yet then you can get reduced payments and/or deferral. You just have to signed up for unemployment as proof etc.

Anyway, it took me ten years to pay off all my student loans from undergrad and graduate school. A pain. I had to plan for it and budget my money and lifestyle to fit. But my education was worth it. And once I secured a fairly good job then the payments were not that noticable.

-Zeno

[poincaraux]

I think some context probably helps here. 1) I worked for a couple of years (nice salary) between college and grad school and paid things off at a good rate. 2) I'm in the hard sciences where they pay you to get a degree. With that said, ~$12K in the hole, all consolidated and deferred.

Wacki - are you still hurting from undergrad, or did you get stuck with more loans in grad school?

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
Wacki - are you still hurting from undergrad, or did you get stuck with more loans in grad school?

[/ QUOTE ]

Both.

[lordfoo]

My grad program was in the physical sciences/engineering, so the state paid me to go to school. What are you studying?

[Jeff W]

[ QUOTE ]
you can basically defer and avoid them forever.

[/ QUOTE ]

Please explain.

I just got a [censored] letter forcing me to start paying off my loans(I graduated last month!) in order to lock up my interest rate(otherwise they add 2%). Wtf, I'll slaughter those greedy moneygrubbing fuckers like the pigs they are.

[wacki]

Bioinformatics.

I've had jobs working in the labs and internships out the waazooo. My resume could not look better right now. Still, I didn't find out about graduate assistantships till very late in the game.

Right now I'm a little over $70K in debt.

I'm not as bad as my sister who went to med school and ran up a $250,000 bill.

My brother went to Notre Dame and ran up a nice bill there.

I've just kind of turned a blind eye to it but consolidating my loans has made it hard to ignore. I'm in a bad mood.

[CrashPat]

I think that I will be 27K in debt after my final undergrad year, if I get my masters without help it will hit 45K or 50K, if I do what I want and get help it will stay at 27K, maybe hit 30K. I may not go for it though, and become a bum and move to nigeria, or fake my death and use the insurance to cover 16 of it, the rest is just federal stafford loans which are forgiven upon death anyway. /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Realistically I am looking at between 30 and 50K with a 3 to 5% interest rate, I think I will be able to afford it.

[Dr. StrangeloveX]

wow. you are all suckers.

[jakethebake]

[ QUOTE ]
When it comes to student loans, how screwed are you?


[/ QUOTE ]

All depends on what you'll make when you finish. English lit? You're probably [censored]. Law or MBA school? You'll be fine.

[goofball]

[ QUOTE ]
wow. you are all suckers.

[/ QUOTE ]

Be a TA? get funding? seriously.

[swede123]

Yup, become a teachers assistant, sometimes called graduate assistance. Lots of schools use TAs/GAs for all kinds of random research, secretary positions etc. I didn't pay a dime towards my MBA, instead I worked ten hours per week in the computer lab. Best job I ever had.

Of course certain post-graduate work might not offer graduate assistantships, or they work you too hard to have any kind of job. This is the situation for my wife in med-school. As of the end of year two for her we owe about $60,000. Fortunately most doctors pay off their student loans within five years of graduating, so I'm sure it'll all work out.

Swede

[fnord_too]

I'm in between grad degrees, but between college and grad school (I was working when I got my masters, so this was pretty much gratuitous debt) I wracked up about 60K in loans. I am paying them off at 3% (!!!!!!) over 30 years, so I don't think I am screwed in the least. (Of course I never knew I would get such a sweet consolidation deal, I was just bing a weak human at the time.)

[jakethebake]

[ QUOTE ]
I wracked up about 60K in loans. I am paying them off at 3% (!!!!!!) over 30 years, so I don't think I am screwed in the least.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is why you SHOULD take the loans, even if you have the money. The interest rate is like 1.5% now. Leave your money in stocks, bonmds, funds, whatever. It'll probably do much better than 1.5%.

[lucas9000]

[ QUOTE ]
im not to worried about it. not in grad school yet, but will be in law school paying my way through. ill pay em off easily when i make 80 grand first year out.....bitches

[/ QUOTE ]

yeah i'll be paying off my law school and undergrad loans for a while. unless you live in some very cheap locale, $80k/year isn't a fortune.

[IronDragon1]

[ QUOTE ]
im not to worried about it. not in grad school yet, but will be in law school paying my way through. ill pay em off easily when i make 80 grand first year out.....bitches

[/ QUOTE ]

You may do well now/in law school but that statement showed an incredible lack of the fundamentals of economics/finance

[Wintermute]

You must be in the wrong field... I get paid to go to grad school.

[OtisTheMarsupial]

pretty bad, but hopefully if I land a public interest job and the state still has money, they'll reimburse my tuition.

[chrisdhal]

My employer is paying for mine.

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

[ QUOTE ]
pretty bad, but hopefully if I land a public interest job and the state still has money, they'll reimburse my tuition.

[/ QUOTE ]
Do they really reimburse after the fact? I mean, I know they'll pay for you to go to school, provided you have an agreement with them at the time, but will they be willing to just put up a bunch of cash after you've already 'paid' for it and you essentially have no leverage on them to pay it?

[poincaraux]

[ QUOTE ]
Bioinformatics.

I've had jobs working in the labs and internships out the waazooo. My resume could not look better right now. Still, I didn't find out about graduate assistantships till very late in the game.

Right now I'm a little over $70K in debt.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ouch. Standard procedure here (biophysics, chemistry, bioinformatics, ecology/evolutionary biology, etc.) is to get yourself on an NIH training grant early on and maybe get your own funding later on. Failing that, the professors will usually write you into a grant. Everybody does a few semesters of teaching and/or graduate assistantship-ing along the way as well.

Seriously, it sounds like the person in charge of organizing your department is doing a bad job here. Especially in something like bioinformatics where there's plenty of grant money to go around.

On the bright side, you have a good resume and you're about to be done with the accumulating-loans phase.

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
Seriously, it sounds like the person in charge of organizing your department is doing a bad job here.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes very bad. I really did get screwed on this one.

[Girchuck]

Zero debt
They actually pay me to do the research and cove the tuition

[fluff]

Not [censored] at all. I have a full RA that pays for my tuition, a decent stipend and health insurance, paying me basically for doing research I need to do anyway (and/or for surfing 2+2). Thank you federal gov't.

[phage]

It is not up to the administrators to push the students. Most administrators will certainly facilitate things but it usually up to the student and the PI to write the grant. That said most grad schools pay their students (and tuition is deferred).

[gvibes]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I wracked up about 60K in loans. I am paying them off at 3% (!!!!!!) over 30 years, so I don't think I am screwed in the least.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is why you SHOULD take the loans, even if you have the money. The interest rate is like 1.5% now. Leave your money in stocks, bonmds, funds, whatever. It'll probably do much better than 1.5%.

[/ QUOTE ]

The consolidation rates go up to 4.8 or so, like, tomorrow.

[gvibes]

>130, all from law school.

I had an offer to stay in scenic Champaign, get a masters (CompE) for free, and get paid something like 1500/month (which in the land of 300 apartments is a huge sum), but I decided to work instead.

EDIT: I suppose I should add that my total debt is roughly equal to my starting salary, so no regrets.

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
>130, all from law school.

.....

EDIT: I suppose I should add that my total debt is roughly equal to my starting salary, so no regrets.

[/ QUOTE ]

I hate you.

j/k

[RicktheRuler]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Forget grad school, I'm 20k in the hole just from undergrad, and I'm lucky not to be quite a bit deeper.

NT

[/ QUOTE ]

My sister owes a quarter mil.

Med school

[/ QUOTE ]

*Throwing up in my mouth a little bit.*

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]


My sister owes a quarter mil.

Med school

[/ QUOTE ]

*Throwing up in my mouth a little bit.*

[/ QUOTE ]

She's only getting paid 46 K right now. She delivered eleven babies yesterday.

[RicktheRuler]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]


My sister owes a quarter mil.

Med school

[/ QUOTE ]

*Throwing up in my mouth a little bit.*

[/ QUOTE ]

She's only getting paid 46 K right now. She delivered eleven babies yesterday.

[/ QUOTE ]

That is awful. You should be very proud of your sister. See my post in Help People/Positive, what would you suggest.

[poincaraux]

[ QUOTE ]
It is not up to the administrators to push the students.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's not really true. Here's an easy example: all of the schools that admitted me said something like this in their letter: "we'll guarantee you $20K/year plus tuition and fees for 5 years, assuming you remain a student in good standing." Now, I went out of my way to find funding sources, but what if I hadn't? You can bet that our secretaries would have pressed me to apply for fellowships, etc. rather than have the department pony up $45K/yr.

More generally, things run better with money. Good administrators will do what they can to get as much extra money as possible flowing into their departments. And things run way better when the grad students have enough money to get by. Good administrators help to make sure this is the case.

[ QUOTE ]
it usually up to the student and the PI to write the grant.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's more true in some fields than others. I'm in biophysics, and every grant I've seen has been written either by the PI or by a Post Doc. Grad students might help out a bit, but they don't do bulk of the work. I'm pretty sure it's the same in bioinformatics, but I'm not positive.

My wife, on the other hand, is in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. She writes a ton of grants herself. Never the big multimillion dollar ones, obviously, but a lot of grants for a couple of thousand.

[ QUOTE ]
That said most grad schools pay their students (and tuition is deferred).

[/ QUOTE ]

In our department, most students are paid directly by their advisors, who are expected to have grants to cover such things. The tuition isn't deferred either; the advisors pay it.

[eastbay]

[ QUOTE ]
Bioinformatics.

I've had jobs working in the labs and internships out the waazooo. My resume could not look better right now. Still, I didn't find out about graduate assistantships till very late in the game.

Right now I'm a little over $70K in debt.


[/ QUOTE ]

I'm confused. You PAID to go to grad school in bioinformatics?

eastbay

[phage]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
It is not up to the administrators to push the students.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's not really true. Here's an easy example: all of the schools that admitted me said something like this in their letter: "we'll guarantee you $20K/year plus tuition and fees for 5 years, assuming you remain a student in good standing." Now, I went out of my way to find funding sources, but what if I hadn't? You can bet that our secretaries would have pressed me to apply for fellowships, etc. rather than have the department pony up $45K/yr.

More generally, things run better with money. Good administrators will do what they can to get as much extra money as possible flowing into their departments. And things run way better when the grad students have enough money to get by. Good administrators help to make sure this is the case.

[ QUOTE ]
it usually up to the student and the PI to write the grant.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's more true in some fields than others. I'm in biophysics, and every grant I've seen has been written either by the PI or by a Post Doc. Grad students might help out a bit, but they don't do bulk of the work. I'm pretty sure it's the same in bioinformatics, but I'm not positive.

My wife, on the other hand, is in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. She writes a ton of grants herself. Never the big multimillion dollar ones, obviously, but a lot of grants for a couple of thousand.

[ QUOTE ]
That said most grad schools pay their students (and tuition is deferred).

[/ QUOTE ]

In our department, most students are paid directly by their advisors, who are expected to have grants to cover such things. The tuition isn't deferred either; the advisors pay it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Clearly things are run differently in different fields/schools. However, I have never heard of an administrator going beyond frequent reminders when it comes to applying for fellowships. The salary burden related to a grad student falls on the PI and as such they tend to push their students to apply for fellowships. In this case the application (including the experimental outline) is often prepared by the grad student. Larger grants (NIH RO1 types) that fund the lab are indeed written by the PI with some help from postdocs. Again, I have never heard of a student or PI being responsible for tuition. Tuition is usually part of the operating costs of the department and if that burden were placed on the PI the size of most labs would shrink dramatically. Of course some scools may run differently but I can't imagine that many PIs would be willing to cover 10K+ tuition costs for untested grad students whe they could hire postdocs who have much more lab experience. All my experience relates to biomedical sciences so it may be skewed...

[onthebutton]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Bioinformatics.

I've had jobs working in the labs and internships out the waazooo. My resume could not look better right now. Still, I didn't find out about graduate assistantships till very late in the game.

Right now I'm a little over $70K in debt.


[/ QUOTE ]

I'm confused. You PAID to go to grad school in bioinformatics?

eastbay

[/ QUOTE ]

Believe it. NIH and NSF funding pays for people like us to get our Ph.D.s.

[mslif]

Got a full scholarship thank GOD! But a lot of my friends who went to law school have loans in the hundred of thousands of dollars! that blows