Pufer, on Oct 27 2005, 08:45 PM, said:
Yeah, six-figure debt by the time I get out of school. I probably have what it takes to get into the Columbias and Yales of the law school world, but around $38,000 a year for tuition alone is damn hard to swallow (especially as I currently pay around $700/yr after scholarships). Hell, it's got me thinking about putting up with all the Mormons' crazy rules just to get BYU's $11,000/yr JD. If anyone here hasn't seen the BYU "honor code", it's worth a look. I've likely done enough in the past hour alone to get expelled from Brigham Young. Just a little preview, there is no drug use, drinking, extra-marital sex (covering intimate contact of any type), porn (very loose definition, a Victoria's Secret catalogue would likely be pornographic), smoking, cursing, coffee drinking, tea drinking, chocolate eating, beard wearing, posession of non-standard haircuts, or wearing of "immodest" clothing (just about anything short of a suit). Rather notably, they also only allow students to live in an area within two miles of the school in very strange apartment complexes where you rent rooms instead of whole apartments and you
must have roommates. Members of the opposite sex aren't allowed to even be in the same [/i]complex[/i] as one another. Students must also allow for random searches of their property so that the school can catch all those immoral heathens wearing shorts and drinking tea while they're not on school property (I hear they don't actually use this "small-type" provision very often). Great stuff.
-Pufer
Well, if you can stand the "rule" I'd take it seems like a good deal, and BYU is pretty well known through out the U.S. Just be prepared for everyone to think you are a mormon.
Sundered Angel, on Oct 27 2005, 09:48 PM, said:
OK, so BYU is a frightening example of everything a university should NOT be. But on a more serious note, have you looked at any schools with needs-based financial aid policies (the whole Ivy League is pretty much in this category). Basically, they calculate what your parents can afford, hit them with that, hit you with some fixed sum in work/loans, and then award scholarship moneys to make up the rest.
So in theory Yale charges 40k+ per year, but me and my parents sure as hell don't pay that.
SA and Pufer going to the same school? That would be sweet.
ankhwatcher, on Oct 28 2005, 03:32 PM, said:
You people scare me. We are paying 2 000 Euro for this year, and that is only because i didn't get the points for a proper course.
The government threatened us with tuition fees a couple of years ago and there was anarchy.
Listening to you makes the ridiculously over expensive TV license seem trivial.
It all works out. The taxes are way higher on income in Europe. Hence the government can afford more social programs...such as paying for college. Plus not everyone over here goes to an ivy league school so the average tuition isn't actually 35k to 40k and as SA said few people actually pay all that.
Pufer, on Oct 28 2005, 09:11 PM, said:
The problem with the needs-based financial aid programs is that the FAFSA system's formula for determining parental contribution is skewed toward the holding of capital assets rather than current assets. When you figure in that my family owns millions of dollars worth of real estate interests, it looks like they should be contributing one heck of a lot more than they are actually able to afford, but it still brackets me right out of any potential assistance. This happens as, despite of the capital value of the assets (in terms of how much money apartment compex A would be if it was sold today), there really isn't all that much of a current value (in terms of cash in the ol' bank account) to be made with all of it due to various circumstances (namely, the disparity between Albuquerque property values and rental rates and my parents' existing debt load). In order to give me as much as the government thinks that they should, my parents would have to either sell off some of their capital assets or go into debt themselves, neither option being particularly attractive. I'd much rather leverage myself up to my eyeballs than force my family into a worse situation for my sake. I am, however, looking into what it takes to remove my parents from the equation altogether. If I suddenly was all by myself for tax and aid purposes, with a net worth of maybe $35,000 and a job that makes me, if I'm lucky, $15,000/yr, I imagine that I'd have people throwing money at me.
There are also one hell of a lot of academic scholarships/grants at the law school level, I'm hoping that I'm going to be able to get a few of those to take some of the burden away.
-Pufer
I was thinking about doing that it is a great idea. You probably will have to jump through some hoops, but there are ways to do it (perhaps setting up an LLC of which you are one of the beneficiaries). However, there is one problem with this approach. You must cut yourself off completely from your family. This means in an emergency or such they may not have the power to make decisions for you i.e. tell the doctor to administer life saving surgery at there expense or get a second opinion on a procedure they don't think is needed. You can take care of this though as I'm sure you are capable becoming a lawyer and all. But it is something to consider.
Good luck on the college thing. You must be a dang good student to be only paying 700 a term with no financial aid so I don't think getting merit bases scholarships will be too bad as long as you bug the right people.
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