What 200k of SL Debt looks like

[Daria Morgandorffer]

Sorry if this has been posted, but HOLYSHITBALLS! For an UNDERGRAD!



gawker.com/5696300/what-200000-in-student-debt-looks-like?skyline=true&s=i

[ijack]

$200k for an UG degree?!?!?

[bliss]

Wow. I'm getting my SL notices and I'm not looking forward to those payments.

[Deleted]

wtmf?

[egeiger]

What do you mean you dont know how it would pan out? Its math... Not some big mystery.Eta - by "you" I mean the borrower.

[mskitkat]

And I thought my SLs were bad...

[Daria Morgandorffer]

The only thing that stands out is her year abroad. I wonder if it took her like 7 years to graduate. Jaysus.

[loveday]

A little critical thinking on the part of this girl would have been in her favor. It's well known that Northeastern is one of the most expensive colleges in the region. Why would you choose to go there and take out loans, for an education that you will never be able to pay off unless you become independently wealthy?

[catbus]

Yes, that sucks for her. But "The total was boosted by summer classes, books and miscellaneous expenses, and a year spent studying abroad.)" She and her parents must have known how much all this stuff actually cost, but it was likely all kind of theoretical while she was in school. Now that she's out, she realizes that those four years really did cost actual money.

I do agree with this: "So even if you don't donate to Kelli's debt relief effort, take her cautionary tale as proof that knowledge is not, in fact, priceless." Maybe I'm heartless, but no way in hell I'd donate to her "cause."

[Deleted]

I'm kind of bitter. I saw study abroad and summer classes both as luxuries for people whose parents were willing to foot the bill. I would have loved to free up my schedule a bit and not have to take 19 credit hours, but those classes were $$$ and going part time was not MM at my private college.

I mean, I get she's first gen, but you know that $200,000 is a shit ton of money and wouldn't a sane person not want to add more onto that figure unless absolutely necessary?

[ondaflipside]

I highly doubt she was thinking: "omg, I'll owe $200K" when she was partying it up abroad.

[Deleted]

Sadly, I think my niece is on this track. She's going to school to be a teacher and already has a huge amount of debt and she's going to a state school. She's not thinking about what taking out loans/debt will do to her later, she just thinks about it in 'funny money' terms.

[Daria Morgandorffer]

And if you add all that up, it's a bit more than 200k in the end.....

[catbus]

Aug 23, 2012 16:03:41 GMT -5 Daria Morgandorffer said:

The only thing that stands out is her year abroad. I wonder if it took her like 7 years to graduate. Jaysus.

There were also "miscellaneous expenses."
I assume she accepted the full amount extended to her each term, and spent anything that was left over.

And what is her job now? (I can't see her donation site at work; sorry if she answers this there.) She says her degree probably helped her get her job, but it doesn't sound like the education was worth $200K if she isn't paid enough to afford those $1600 monthly SL payments. If I lived on my own on my current salary and cut out 401(k) contributions and most luxuries, I could afford about $700 in rent. I'm paid a fairly average salary.

[Deleted]

Aug 23, 2012 16:03:41 GMT -5 Daria Morgandorffer said:

The only thing that stands out is her year abroad. I wonder if it took her like 7 years to graduate. Jaysus.

It says she graduated HS in 2005 and college in 2009, so no.

Current tuition & fees at Northeastern is ~$40,000. If you add $10,000/year for living expenses (which is probably low for Boston), BAM! you're at $200k. Tuition was probably a little bit lower while she was there, but you add in the summer classes, books and miscellaneous expenses, and semester abroad, and it's easy to see how she got there.

It sounds like there are things that she could have done differently - skip the semester abroad, get a job to pay for books. But really, $200,000 is about what I would expect four years at a private college to cost these days. If you don't have a hefty scholarship or parents with deep pockets, you're pretty screwed.

[ondaflipside]

And I'm LOL'ing to the $0.10 donation to date.

I'm a first gen too, with ZERO help from family. She gets no sympathy from me.

[kadams767]

Aug 23, 2012 16:06:48 GMT -5 tacom said:

I'm kind of bitter. I saw study abroad and summer classes both as luxuries for people whose parents were willing to foot the bill. I would have loved to free up my schedule a bit and not have to take 19 credit hours, but those classes were $$$ and going part time was not MM at my private college.

I mean, I get she's first gen, but you know that $200,000 is a shit ton of money and wouldn't a sane person not want to add more onto that figure unless absolutely necessary?

I think that just depends though. I studied abroad and took summer school on loans. Even though those ended up being pretty much my only loans for undergrad, I probably would have done it that way regardless. I wasn't going to skip study abroad because my parents were poor.

[HoneySpider]

I can't believe people donate to shit like this.

[bliss]

Aug 23, 2012 16:03:41 GMT -5 Daria Morgandorffer said:

The only thing that stands out is her year abroad. I wonder if it took her like 7 years to graduate. Jaysus.

It took my 7 years and my loans are no where close to that. If I traveled abroad it would have added maybe $15K but even then I'm still no where near her.

[aspentosh]

I can't bring myself to feel bad for her. Why would you go to such an expensive school, take out a loan for everything, get no help and expect any different?

[Daria Morgandorffer]

From her website.

I still can't believe I've been given $10,000 from perfect strangers.
I know you all have been receiving sporadic email updates from me for the past few months, pestering you with new information on my situation - but I still don't know if you all realize how much of an impact you've had on me, as well as my student loans.
Starting in November, when I e-mailed Gawker with a sliver of hope that they'd be able to steer my website in a positive direction, I was consistently upset with the majority of reactions on the Internet: these people didn't even know me, but now my name was associated with words like "entitled," "stupid" and "beggar" -- which I'd never intended. People said cringe-worthy things about my parents, as well as my decision-making skills. I felt horribly alone - and worse, I'd dragged my parents into an Internet-spawned disaster. And I couldn't help but think - was I stupid?? Did I make the decision to borrow money, not because I was naïve, but because I am just. that. dense. ??
It's taken me months to be able to get to a much better place - a place where I actually recognize the amount of people who "donated" or "contributed" a certain amount of money to my student loan debt, either because they could relate, or they sympathized - or maybe because they just understood how fortunate they are not to be in my predicament. Either way, it takes an extremely kind person to take time out of his or her day to help someone else. Your investment in my struggle out of debt will not be a fruitless one.
I mentioned a few weeks ago that my friend Courtney and I are starting a project to help raise awareness of "real world" problems, like personal finance, the college game, and generally unforeseen issues, for students who may not get the full scope otherwise. We hope to touch on etiquette as well: the comments I received in past months definitely showed that some people from older generations truly believe our generation lacks empathy, manners, etc. In taking their opinion into consideration, I feel as though we could become a one-stop shop for high schoolers and college students to gain info on any matter they'd like to know more about -- or need to.
Please visit our site starting March 31st at infor.mu, and if you feel it's useful, pass it along to friends or any students who may be able to use us as a resource.
On a semi-unrelated note, twohundredthou.com was mentioned yesterday in an article on WSJ's Smart Money (pg 2, http://www.smartm...) discussing "weird ways" to pay for higher education. At least I'm not alone: the article mentions several other people who resorted to unique and/or fun ways to pay for college. An interesting read! The site was also mentioned in another article on CNBC (http://www.cnbc.c...) in early March!
Thanks again for all you've done!
— Kelli

[Deleted]

You also have to remember that tuition has been skyrocketing since whenever you graduated. Eight years ago, tuition at my private undergrad was $19,000. Today it's $37,000. Nearly double in eight years! Cost of attendant (tuition, room, and board) at my undergrad has hit $50,000. Four years of that, and you have $200,000.

And this is hardly limited to private schools. The most recent edition of a local law publication compared tuition at UW-Madison Law School. It has nearly TRIPLED in ten years.

The fact is that no matter where one goes to school, the cost of education is far, far outpacing wages. So sure, this one girl probably made some stupid decisions. But she's hardly alone, and it's really a systemic problem.

[Daria Morgandorffer]

Aug 23, 2012 16:17:24 GMT -5 @angryharpy said:

You also have to remember that tuition has been skyrocketing since whenever you graduated. Eight years ago, tuition at my private undergrad was $19,000. Today it's $37,000. Nearly double in eight years! Cost of attendant (tuition, room, and board) at my undergrad has hit $50,000. Four years of that, and you have $200,000.

And this is hardly limited to private schools. The most recent edition of a local law publication compared tuition at UW-Madison Law School. It has nearly TRIPLED in ten years.

The fact is that no matter where one goes to school, the cost of education is far, far outpacing wages. So sure, this one girl probably made some stupid decisions. But she's hardly alone, and it's really a systemic problem.

Agreed. And when the SL bubble finally does burst, it'll be spectacular.

[HoneySpider]

I got into arguably the best grad school in my field, but I didn't go because it was going to be too expensive. I went to a school that offered me a grad assistantship with full tuition instead. Such is life sometimes. There is no way she should have gone to a school that costs that much and pay for it all on loans. Sorry.

[Deleted]

Dude, she has gotten almost $15K in donations so far!! idiots!

[ejpint]

Yeah, I don't feel like she lived extravagantly - I totally feel for her situation.
However, she should have considered those costs going in, first gen or no. I knew I would be 100% responsible for my tuition, and I funded all of my college experience on loans and summer jobs. I chose a state school over Brown because I knew I'd be paying that shit back someday. I was CRAP with money management in college/my early twenties! If I could figure that out at 17, surely she could have?

[catbus]

Aug 23, 2012 16:16:01 GMT -5 @gypsy said:

Aug 23, 2012 16:12:17 GMT -5 ondaflipside said:

And I'm LOL'ing to the $0.10 donation to date.

I'm a first gen too, with ZERO help from family. She gets no sympathy from me.

It says $12k now on the donation site.

REALLY? Good for her, I guess. Wonder if anyone would donate to my "Babies are expennnnsive. Why didn't anyone tellll me? *Pout*" fund.

[Deleted]

Aug 23, 2012 16:20:48 GMT -5 ejpint said:

Yeah, I don't feel like she lived extravagantly - I totally feel for her situation.
However, she should have considered those costs going in, first gen or no.

Absolutely. I completely agree that she should probably have chosen a cheaper school. I only went to my super spendy private school because I had a huge scholarship that covered most of tuition.

But I still think it's problematic to look at her situation in isolation and act like it's just one stupid kid who had a sea of really cheap schools to choose from and made a dumb choice. It's more like she made the worst choice of all the available bad choices.

[Daria Morgandorffer]

I can't really talk smack about this girl considering that I took 15k in private school loans and didn't use a penny of it toward school. 18 year olds are not very wise yo.

[kershnic]

I went to an expensive private school and my total cost of attendance (including living expenses) was over 200k. But I don't expect internet strangers to pay for it. But I find your hating on her study abroad experience interesting.... my semester abroad was my cheapest semester of college. People think SLs are free money. But it's not my fault you made a bad decision.