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Comment by stevencorona | Hacker News Reader

The craziest part, IMO, is that I had to make a decision whether or not to take on $175,000 in debt (I went to RIT, it costs $44,000 per year) when I was 18 years old and had never handled more than $300. Sure! Sign me up! I couldn't even imagine what that much money would look like, let alone feel like to pay back- at that time, it was as equally mysterious as $10,000 or $1,000,000.

Luckily, I left after my 2nd year and only walked away with $50k in student loans. It was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

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I think the craziest part is actually that declaring bankruptcy doesn't cancel student loan debt, so there's no failsafe if you don't get a decent job afterwards.

And that the penalty for defaulting is even more money owed. Pay the loans, pay interest for most of your life on an education that frequently doesn't pay commensurately to a job in the field, assuming you can get one. Don't pay, eventually owe hundreds of thousands of dollars more than you did originally.

If you have federal loans, you can use income-based repayment, where you pay a tolerable fraction of your pay and the loan is forgiven after 25 years. If you have private loans, you're pretty well screwed for life.

Why did two years cost $50k but four years costs $175k? (2/4 != 50/175)

As far as the $300 goes I take it you never worked in high school?

Possibly the difference between the amount of subbed and unsubbed loans that you can take out as a freshman verses a junior. One of my friends (this was a decade ago) got a great financial aid package her freshman year at a private college. Then each year, as new levels of Stafford loans unlocked, the university replaced "freshman" scholarships with loans.

Still, a $75k jump is unheard of unless you're doing some sort of hybrid undergrad/med school program.

He went to RIT, so he might been in a coop program. Not sure how RIT's works, but if its similar to uwaterloo's (which I've been told is so), after 2 calender years, he may have had only 3 school terms and 3 work terms. That's ~65k for school minus whatever he managed to save from his work terms.

No one really pays sticker price for college. I had some grants, financial aid, and (like someone else mentioned), the co-op program helped pay for some of my tuition.

I did work, at Target, making minimum wage. One full-time paycheck was about 300 bucks, give or take. Since I supported myself, that money was used on car/food/gas. So, 300 bucks was the most I'd ever seen.

If nobody pays sticker price for college why did you use the sticker price when discussing how much debt you chose not to accept?

Why in the world would you go to a college that costs that much if you weren't rich?

Right? And if I had to make the decision now, I wouldn't do it. But when you're 18, your parents opinion carries alot of weight- and I had parents that were telling me- STEVE you absolutely cannot be successful without a degree. A degree is everything. It's everything!

And as an ignorant 18 year old, I had no idea what a $175,000 loan really meant. Everyone does it, right? So it must not be that bad.

Well, I agree with your parents in that you need to get a degree. But for most jobs a degree from pretty much anywhere is fine. For technical jobs there are tons of good programs at state schools. That's just too much money.

Disagree. You can be wildly successful by just hustling. I am.

Your top end is limited unless you start your own company.

Not true. Join a startup. Or better yet, learn how to sell yourself. You'll never need a degree if you can sell your passion.

Co-op program. And networking.

A lot of companies see RIT as a huge talent pool, and dedicate quite a bit of recruiting resources to look for potential interns and full-timers. Plus, you'll find peers that you can use to develop your professional network.

>A lot of companies see RIT as a huge talent pool, and dedicate quite a bit of recruiting resources to look for potential interns and full-timers. Plus, you'll find peers that you can use to develop your professional network.

That's too much money to spend on a technical degree. You could make the argument Harvard or Yale is worth that kind of money because your contacts are with people who are going to be senators and CEOs. But a place like RIT? $44k/yr is way too much money for what you're going to get.

> way too much money for what you're going to get.

YMMV.

Because of the fear that if you didn't go you would never have the opportunity to become rich, or even to become middle class.

I couldn't even imagine what that much money would look like, let alone feel like to pay back- at that time, it was as equally mysterious as $10,000 or $1,000,000.

Really? You were so disconnected from numbers that you couldn't tell the difference between 10^4 and 10^6?

I've never understood that argument. I'm 19, and last year I could comprehend this. It's not particularly difficult to run the math versus your expected salary, cost of living, etc.

Yes. Maybe you're a particularly savvy 19-year old, but when I was 18 those two numbers were as equally unfathomable to me. I'm not saying I couldn't tell the difference, I'm just saying that they were so large and incomprehensible, it didn't matter.

It's the equivalent of trying to wrap your head around the difference between 1 billion and 1 trillion dollars. Sure, I can SEE the difference, but really can't comprehend it, even though they are orders of magnitude apart.

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