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I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

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Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#61

Post by HarryHirsch »

iyulaev wrote: post #44
carlosdp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, you went through like 5 different unrelated issues there o_o. But to your first point, the original commenter was stating that EE is a safe bet now, and therefore will likely be in 2 years when the OP graduates.

"Just wait until he gets Pfizered." On a long enough time scale, everyone will get "Pfizered." What makes you think this is likely to happen soon? Genuinely curious, as a practicing (sort of) EE.

I'm looking at Albany Molecular. That is a contract shop in Albany, NY. Ten years ago they were still doing contract work there, and they advertising themselves as being in Albany. That was the downside, but the upside was that cost-of-living in Upstate NY is low.

Nowadays the work is done in Hydarabad, Shanghai and Hungary, and what is left stateside is supervisory work. I think we are seeing a trend in EE towards contract shops. The only thing that's yet missing is for the contract work to be done overseas.

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#62

Post by nazgulnarsil »

rcoder wrote: post #51

This closely mirrors my experience, though my "summer job" straight out of my Freshman year of college was part-time cashiering at a pizza restaurant. From there, I temped as an office worker at a startup, convinced them to hire me full time and let me build databases, then pivoted that into writing Java code. After a year of work wherein I made about $25k, I talked to the financial aid office and found out that my e…

"6 figure student loan debt" is a persistent but false meme. It implies a different distribution of student debt than actually exists.

Average graduating debt was ~$23k last year. http://www.finaid.org/loans/

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#63

Post by superbaconman »

At my current pay it'll take close to 10 years to pay off my college debt. The only hope I have to shorten that period is to produce more value (I'm trying my best), or get lucky with a startup (I'm in a good market). I know I took the long investment, and I'm fine with that. I'm confident in my skills and my drive, but I couldn't imagine being in a different market. My concern lies in the arts and humanities. They are very important, but will suffer immensely.

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#64

Post by gscott »

dsrguru wrote: post #54
anologwintermut wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip side to this is I know someone who went through the legal steps to have their parents money not be counted as theirs and got huge scholarships. Trick: Their parents still supported him and were worth about 100 million. So he got a nice Mercedes(2 actually, he crashed one) and cheap college. It's a flawed system, but simply not counting your parents money is an even more flawed system.

What are those legal steps?

Doing an adult adoption by a poorer family member would do the trick (if you are over 18)

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#67

Post by baddox »

hga wrote: post #33
rayiner wrote: post #14

I agree with the ultimate sentiment, which is that it's generally inadvisable to try and pay your way through school these days. The federal government will let you and your parents borrow as much as you need to pay for school, and you'll make more money after you finish your degree, so your efforts are better spent trying to finish in as few semesters as possible to minimize the amount of money you need to borrow in…

Is there still a screw case for "kids from wealthier families" when the families refuse to help? At least during the '80s, I was told I was ineligible for any financial aid.

Don't forget parents with modest incomes but a lot of savings from planning their own retirement. That's the reason I didn't get any financial aid (other than some subsidized loans to cover part of my costs).

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#68

Post by jrokisky »

hga wrote: post #33
rayiner wrote: post #14

I agree with the ultimate sentiment, which is that it's generally inadvisable to try and pay your way through school these days. The federal government will let you and your parents borrow as much as you need to pay for school, and you'll make more money after you finish your degree, so your efforts are better spent trying to finish in as few semesters as possible to minimize the amount of money you need to borrow in…

Is there still a screw case for "kids from wealthier families" when the families refuse to help? At least during the '80s, I was told I was ineligible for any financial aid.

Would private student loans still be an option in this case?

Re: I cannot afford to go back to engineering school

#70

Post by kyro »

Hey, at least you're not $250k in the hole with an incredibly low 7% interest rate, at the age of 26! What do you all think about a Kickstarter for student loans? I'm looking for $300k in investment or to validate my idea by raising $300k through the service.
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