Hello everyone! I'm currently committed to attend Virginia Tech as a general engineering major. The cost of attendance at Virginia Tech is around 26k per year.
I have received around 8k of free aid I will not have to pay back. The cost is now 18k per year (assuming I get 8k aid for the next 3 years which is probably optimistic at this point).
I have $6k in federal loans ($3k is subsidized) and $2k in work study. Again assuming I will get this much for the next 3 years, the cost is now 10k per year and I will be roughly $24k in debt.
Now, there are a few ways I can chip at this $10k per year I have to deal with. My family is not well off by ANY MEANS. Parents are divorced and dad will not help at all. Mom is willing to contribute whatever she can. She is fine with chipping away at the $10k and has offered to try and take care of that part on her own without loans. I don't know how she's going to manage that with 2 other kids to take care of so lets not assume that the $10k is covered just yet.
If we get a private loan and take out another $40k in loans, bringing my debt total to around $64k after graduation, how plausible is it that I can pay this off? I plan on getting a job in engineering or computer science after graduation. I will definitely try to get internships over the summer and apply for scholarships in college.
What do you guys think? Is this an overwhelming amount of debt or is this something I can manage? I would love to go to Virginia Tech. Their engineering program is very good and I would not want to go to community college. I never participated in many extracirriculars in high school. My mom worked almost every day and I did not have a ride home from school to do extracurricular. On top of this, I was pretty lazy when it came to extracurriculars. I'd like for this to change in college.
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