My financial situation is a bit weird and I’m a HS senior interested in tech, finance and some entrepreneurial related stuff. Super vague, I know, but I wanted to see is WSO thought taking out 200k was worth it for a Wharton, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton or similar school for undergrad. especially when compared to around 50k loans for the CSB (CS + Finance) at UT Austin. Thoughts?
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Absolutely not. People forget you can be successful from any school. UT Austin places people in finance in NY and that number increases every year (probably some west coast too). Also, Austin is a premier city for tech opportunities with more and more firms leaving California for Texas.
Eh I would argue that 150k (the difference between Austin and those schools you mentioned) is worth it.
Student loans are crushing when it comes to building wealth. Wasting $2k a month for 10 years to repay your loans when you’re making maybe 100k a year is a terrible financial decision.
Nobody is paying 2k a month for 10 years for student loans. 2k * 50 weeks * 10 years = 1 million. Do some basic math before spewing bs as a student.
Why are you multiplying it by 50? $200k over 10 years at 4% is a payment of $2,025
C’mon man ...
I understand your point but the life benefits/brand that you will get from going to Harvard will out weight 150k in loans. Would I do it for another school not in the same caliber as Harvard? Fuck no. Working in finance you should be able to pay it off without any issues after a few years.
My friends who went to any ivy made it seem that they had some of the best financial aid offerings. If they're asking you for that much money I'm guessing you probably can afford it. Albeit your parents are maybe asking you to take out the debt when it should probably be them stepping up to pay.
Yeah it’s that last part. They only want to pay 100k. I have a full ride at ASU, my state school, but UT will be about 150k bc of Texas residency laws. I get no aid anywhere else
Just bite the bullet and go to wharton.. your parents are willing to foot some of the bill and it's the only school you've gotten into that's as close to a sure bet of a high paying career path.
Go for it. Rates are low and there's probably gonna be hyperinflation in the future. 200k is nothing in the grand scheme. Maybe get friendly with a billionaire and have him/her pay it off?
about to graduate debt free from community college -> transfer to state school -> BB NYC IB and it was the best decision i’ve ever made. i’m now set up for years without debt and can freely invest my signing bonus/SA earnings without the burden of massive student loans with the same exact job as the wharton bros. obviously wharton/H would have made my life 10x easier to getting that job and even future jobs, but to me being debt free was the biggest blessing coming from a very middle class background. would definitely avoid the debt if possible, not to mention if you think you want to go the IB/PE route and end up disliking it you may feel trapped into those careers because you can’t afford to be unemployed or have an average paying job. ASU places a decent number of kids to banking, i would really consider that route or try to find external scholarships and coordinate with the financial aid office at wharton. i get it it’s really tough to turn a school like wharton down especially with the long term benefits. but the price tag... it personally wasn’t worth it to me
Wasnt worth it? Or you weren’t competitive enough to get into them... of course op can break in from a lot of non target schools but that doesnt mean shit. His whole reason for going to school shouldn’t be just to break into ib. Going to a school like Harvard/Wharton will open doors like no other and benefit him for life. I also did the state school route and if I had the option to go to hyp for 200k i would still had taken it.
i’m very happy with my decision and am not insecure of my non target background. you’re correct in saying that H was never an option for me, but even if i had the opportunity for 200k there’s no way i would have taken it. maybe it’s just my background where my family has a bad history with debt, but i’ve always views that level of debt as irresponsible.
Reach out to financial aid office at HYPSM and if you got into multiple elite schools, you can use that try to get extra $
CSB is a great program, if you want to get anywhere on Wall Street from there I’m sure you can do it. I go to UT and we send at least a couple kids to almost every bank and some buy side shops every year. Having BHP is really helpful to get you into the organizations that can get you these jobs. Also, it’s sunny here and a lot of fun outside of school
Wharton is easily worth the extra $150K. What is that in the long run with close to zero interest rates? Will be nothing to pay back.
Might as well take it and enjoy college. You'll end up with a great job and won't have to waste as much time as you'd do at UT.
Just remember everyone saying “take 200k in debt” isn’t taking 200k in debt...
It doesn't seem like you have an offer from these schools yet, but you most likely won't have to take out that much money.
Let's say you did. Honestly, if you are interested in high finance or tech, 200k in loans is doable. Moreover, if you're paying that much for school, your parents are probably doing ok enough for you to put all your internship money into paying down your loan principal. I went to MIT/Stanford and paid around 10k a year. My summer internship money ranged from around 15k-35k per summer. You could TA a class (grader jobs are the easiest) and get some cash. The easiest part is that you can overcharge the shit out of fairly wealthy suburban parents to tutor kids. Use the prestige to your advantage and tutor for like $50-100/hr.
I know a few kids at my school who had to pay back their parents ~240k for their college expenses later on (no interest obviously). Some did it in like 2-3 years albeit their comp is very high. If you decide to do tech/quant stuff, you can probably get a few offers with total comps over 200k or even 300k.
I'm taking on about ~150k in loans to go to a similar target. I think taking out this much in loans to just get a BB IB job is stupid and wasteful, but that's not what you're paying for. You really are paying for a superior academic college experience, transferred from a non-target and classes are far more satisfying now, and the network of both your school and the Ivy League at large in a sense. I intern at a major HF and every single person I know here either went to an Ivy undergrad or got an M7 MBA. The default credibility you get as a student/alum is valuable and gets you buy-side opps/connections that last your entire life.
Also if your parents co-sign and have good credit it should be like 1.5% annually. If you're not a failure it's a good relative value trade.
If you take the loans, consider how you plan to pay them off. If your plan is dependent on a job in IB, make sure that a) you can succeed in college to a level that makes getting into IB a certainty, and b) you won’t burn out early into your career.
You really don’t want to be in a spot where something goes wrong in college and you can’t get a high paying job as a result. For example, one of your parents gets sick and your GPA drops due to stress/needing to go help them. Does that mean you’re not going to be able to pay your debt?
Same thing for your career. For an example, just look at the thread about first years quitting. If you end up in a job like that, and it’s your only plan for paying back your debt, where will you be?
If you’re confident than nothing will get in your way, then there’s a lot advantages to Wharton. It’s the difference between sending hundreds of emails for a coffee chat vs. meeting bankers by clicking a button on the college website. Just know you have a solid plan before you end up making 50k with a debt load multiple times that.
^This - good advice
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