How much student loan debt do you/did you have?

[LGK]

I had about $30K, graduated in 1999. Finally finished paying them off this year

I did get a number of grants every year as well. I didn't have a college fund from my parents- I worked while I attended college, primarily work study. Typically I had several 13 hour days and a 6 to 7 day week.

 

[Rhea]

No debt.

My parents agreed to pay for room and board and I paid tuition at about $20K per year. I was on the 5 year program so I could work at the same time. My school had it set up that if you couldn't afford to attend and qualified for this program then you'd work for the school for 5 years while studying - part time during term time, full time during the breaks. I also had two other part-time jobs on and off to help with anything above what my parents had agreed to pay for - like the weeks that food, entertainment, and gas cost more than their $30 / week allowance.

During the last 2-3 years my father was unemployed so I applied for another grant to get my on-campus housing for free leaving just the bill for books (parents paid for them, and I sold them back every term to pay for next term), food (parents gave me $30/week for food, spending money, and gas), car insurance (parents paid), cell phone bill (parents paid).

 

[Rhea]

I was determined not to let finances mean I couldn't have the college experience I wanted to have, and im proud I didn't compromise.

I wish I'd done that! I finished with no debt, but I often worked 50-60 hours / week in the school breaks and 20-30 hours / week in the term time. As I was working for the college to pay for my education, all my money went to them other than a few hours a week at minimum wage.

I didn't have the experience I wanted. I managed to do an exchange program for 3-4 months in England (where I live today), but that was my only down time for 5 years. I made no other friends, I rarely socialized with anyone else. All I remember is working my ass off. I'm not sure it was worth it.

 

[Porridge]

None! Uni was free, thank god (well, there was an €800 yearly registration fee at the time, it's gone up quite a bit now), and for living expenses I made enough in summer and part-time jobs and was very lucky to have had help from my very generous and hard-working parents.

 

[Imdanny]

None. My family paid for it. I will say it was a lot less expensive then. The price increases have been outrageous.

 

[kateydid05]

I'm hovering around $100K between undergrad and graduate school. Finished undergrad in 2008 and finished graduate school this past August 2011. Wish I could pay them off quicker than I'm able to do right now. Some days I get frustrated that my parents couldn't help me out but I think I value my education more since I'm paying it back myself. It also encouraged me to do well since it was expensive. Ah oh well to me it's a necessary evil right now.

 

[stephbolt]

None for me - my parents/grandparents paid for my undergrad, and I got paid to go to graduate school (students in the physical sciences typically work for the university as teaching or research assistants and recieve a small stipend as well as free tuition/fees). I certainly wasn't living the high life during those four years, but it enabled me to not take on any debt.

DH's parents paid for his undergrad degree, but he graduated law school with close to 80K in student loans that we are still working on.

 

[vc10um]

Nearly $100K with 4 years of undergrad and 1 year of graduate school. Over 1/3 of that is from my freshman year alone, because I was an out of state student that year and so I paid through the nose at Michigan.

I received my Bachelor's in 2006 and my Master's in 2007.

Now, vc, you seem like an intelligent woman...but why in the WORLD would you pay EXTRA to be out of state at M*CH*G@N? Who pays extra to go to THAT school.


you earned that one on the thread about where you graduated from...go bucks!

::snort::

I DID earn that one, it's true. Nothing but love, dear! <3

But to answer your question...none of the schools I applied to in Ohio (including your alma mater) were as highly-ranked in Biomedical Engineering, or didn't offer the program at all. (I switched from focusing on Chem Eng to Biomed Eng after applications had already gone out...) Also, the OSUMB doesn't have a flag corps and I can't play brass instruments to save my life.

 

[thenew]

I graduated with about 32K in loans in 2007. I've been paying the minimum balance for a few years, but in the last year I started sending lump payments to more aggressively pay off the two loans with the highest interest rates. Those are gone and now I only (!) have 20K left.

Luckily I get paid in yen, so the exchange rate is very favorable. At this pace, I can hopefully pay them off in the next 2-3 years.

 

[Haven]

Yes, absolutely.

But one thing that does bother me is that doctors work for 30 hours straight. I would not want to be treated by a doctor who has been working for even 15 hours straight. That is very unsettling. I've seen posters complain about these type of work shifts before, and it always boggles my mind. I imagine everyone who does this sort of extended work must *think* they are on their A-game the entire time, but I can't believe that. My husband's mother died in a hospital due to an error made by her doctor, and whenever I read posts like this I wonder if he was just working too darn long at the time. (Sorry for the threadjack. I wish you and others who treat people didn't have to work so long and hard. Thank you for what you do.)

I don't think there's a remote possibility that anyone is on their A-game after about 12 hours. Maybe 14-15 if it's been a light day otherwise. After that point, there's a sharp drop off in functioning. I always tell anyone who objects that change in our shift length will never come from within the profession - it's going to have to be public outrage (such as the Libby Zion case) that brings about change. When we talk about wanting it, we're accused of being pansies. There have been some slow steps made over the years. As of July 1, our newest doctors can only work 14 hours at a stretch, and anyone with one year of training can work up to 28 hours at a time. I'm truly sorry for your family's loss.

This makes sense, that change in shifts will have to come from public outrage.
I'm dismayed to hear that you are criticized when you talk about wanting change. That makes me sad for you and other doctors.
This little discussion has given me some new ideas for my composition class. My students focus their writing on a cause, and we always brainstorm a list of injustices that are going on in the world, and in our local community. This issue is one that I've never brought up, but I think it might be very relevant and interesting to my students. Many of them are attending my college to earn their nursing prereqs. So, thank you for the idea, and for the discussion.
Thank you for your kind words. Best of luck to you in your new profession. I don't think you're a pansy, for what it's worth.

 

[wakingdreams53]

Currently, a little over 15k and I'm not even half done yet.
Left my private school and now I'm going to a public cc for free for the time being while I'm still trying to figure out my path.
Parents footed about 3k for my room/board that FAFSA didn't cover.

Debt sucks.

I'm happy for my friends that go to fancy schools and their parents foot the bill, but I'd rather pay it myself and know what I'm paying for than have my parents foot the bill to my uncertainty.

 

[rubybeth]

None for undergrad since parents paid for that (graduated 2003), but about $38K for graduate school (graduated 2009). It would have been more expensive if I'd moved out of state and not lived with my parents. There is a forgiveness program for my field (public libraries) but I hate that we could get a mortgage rate that's less than the interest rate on the student loans, so this sucker is going to be paid off by April 2013.

I am very sad to say that Michele Bachmann is the representative from my district. I can't tell you how many people are hoping the district lines are redrawn so that she no longer represents our community.

 

[NewEnglandLady]

My loans were around $60K (undergrad). I graduated in 2002. I went to a private school, so the debt could have been worse, but I applied for every scholarship possible and had about half my education paid through scholarships.

I started paying off my loans before I even graduated--I worked full time from my sophomore year on--and luckily they are all paid off (beans and rice, rice and beans). Even though I loved my college and valued my internships, I will always regret going that deep into debt for my education.

 

[ImperfectGirl]

$0 for undergrad and my graduate program (I start in the Spring!!) will be free as well thanks to working and paying for it myself and more recently, my husband's GI Bill which is now mine.

 

[MayFlowers]

$0 in student loans here and I graduated this past spring. I worked my a$$ off in high school and got scholarships to cover every bit of tuition, books and more at an in-state public university. I literally got a check each semester to go to school there because I had more scholarship money than the cost of tuition. I used the extra money to pay for books and put the rest into a savings account. I worked part time (roughly 20-25 hours a week) through all four years of undergrad and that income paid for all my other expenses.

I haven't started grad school yet.

 

[tyty333]

I came out with $5K. Paid it off...no biggie.

 

[partgypsy]

This was 20 years ago, but went to a private college. Had a merit scholarship, the remainder (8K a year) my parents paid. My parents also gave me $500 a semester for lodging, food, books, etc. From a combination of living frugally, part time summer jobs and teaching assistant and tutoring jobs I was able to graduate debt-free.

For graduate school, basically if you got in, the tuition was waived. In exchange for teaching/research duties I also received a stipend of around 11K a year. I would like to say I was able to live on that amount and graduated debt free but to tell the truth I had about 5K in credit card debt by the end (paid off in a year). However I knew of a number of students at the university who graduated in much worse shape, multiple 10's of thousands in debt due to accumulated living expenses. Even for someone who is mature, taking a loan out doesn't seem like "real" money. That is, until you graduate and are stressing out both about career issues AND paying off these huge loans.

I really feel for those getting a higher education now, it seems like prices are not reasonable to what the job returns will be.

 

[jewelerman]

none. i lived on about $500/month while in college the second time around from 2003-2007. it was really hard to do but with the help of scholarships i was able to get through school for the four years without debt.and as Ive mentioned before on the forum i had to sell some of my jewelry collection to get through the lean periods.

 

[Dreamer_D]

I had about $3000, which is now paid off, after 11 years in school to get a PhD! We have very good granting and scholarship programs in Canada.

 

[Tuckins1]

I had roughly 30k in debt, but it has gone down a bit... Still owe around 20 or so.

 

[gemgirl]

I went to college a long time ago, but I came out with no debt at all and three job offers. I received a Regents scholarship award that paid part of my tuition, my parents paid the balance of my tuition and I worked two jobs to pay for all of my books and supplies and to save to get married. (My first husband and I paid for our wedding ourselves. My first wedding was very lavish. Actually, so did my second husband and I but that wedding was much simpler).

 

[amc80]

I have about $20k, which included 4 years of undergrad and a year of grad school. My grandma and parents helped me out, but I still worked most of the time. Santa Barbara is SO expensive to live. Just to share a ROOM with someone in a one bedroom apartment it was easily $700 a month each, not including utilities or anything.

But, my loans are at 3% so I'm not exactly in a huge rush to pay them down.

 

[kama_s]

I didn't have any parental support, even for food, shelter etc. I graduated undergrad with a 28K loan. Paid off almost all of it during my masters with my generous scholarship, TAing etc.

Canada. Eff yeah!

 

[lliang_chi]

I now have about $17K from grad school. My undergrad I came out with maybe $1,500. I worked FT and did grad school at night, so I was able to still afford living expenses etc. My sister quit her job and took loans for everything, school, books, living expenses etc, and her loans are pretty much 2.5x's what I had to pay. My loan interest is pretty reasonable so haven't been aggressively paying them off, but I probably will in a few years.

DH had zero. His folks paid for his undergrad and his company paid for his Grad degree. Now *that's* the way to go (company paid!)

 

[nfowife]

I was very fortunate that my grandmother paid for my private college undergrad degree. It was $$$ too. Very lucky.

DH has no loans as he went to the Naval Academy and it is free to go there (if by free you mean you have to serve in the military for 5+ years after graduation, depending on what specialty you select).

He plans to get a graduate degree upon getting out of the military in the near future and will be using the 9/11 GI Bill to cover the majority of the costs.

I'll be going back at some point in the next few years for a graduate degree when my youngest child is in kindergarten. That will be out of pocket so I'll be going to whatever university is local and public. For the degree I want it isn't as necessary to go to an ivy league school.

 

[ame]

None. My parents paid for our educations except my brother, who got a full ride for football. They also paid more than half of our masters degrees (my sister and I), and we were able to wipe them out quickly on our own--my husband doesn't do debt, nor does hers. So those were paid off fast. I am glad we did that, we might have had a larger savings but not having that bill is a nice weight off my mind.

 

[EricaR]

My loans were around $60K (undergrad). I graduated in 2002. I went to a private school, so the debt could have been worse, but I applied for every scholarship possible and had about half my education paid through scholarships.

I started paying off my loans before I even graduated--I worked full time from my sophomore year on--and luckily they are all paid off (beans and rice, rice and beans). Even though I loved my college and valued my internships, I will always regret going that deep into debt for my education.

This (including debt amount and year!), minus the starting to pay it off before college ended. My school did not allow students to work more than 15 hours a week. Found that one out the hard way when the Dean of Students found out I was working two jobs, each 15 hours or so. I was forced to drop one so was left with just enough to cover living expenses (food, gas, etc).

I however, am not all the way done paying them off. That should happen by the end of the year. I'm making four months worth of payments each month and it is thrilling seeing the balances drop so fast.

 

[mrscushion]

None, thanks to my generous parents and scholarships.

 

[natascha]

I pay no tuition, but I have around 30k from my undergrad and my masters will be in the area of 25k. This is for living expenses and books. Sweden is crazy expensive, heck just going to the toilet will cost you $1.65, a cheap glass of wine from $12 and one of those packets of cheap noddles is $1.20. Food, transport, etc everything is expensive.

 

[Amys Bling]

Too much.