Paying for law/med school
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Anonymous
Uh huh. That doesn't mean they know that it's 70 percent parents paying in cash. |
Anonymous
Well, good for you and it's your money but it's also stupid. You can give your kids a "leg up" in plenty of other ways. You don't have to pay for every cent of a decades long education to do it. |
Anonymous
| I don’t know if school policies have changed, but when DH went to ivy law school the financial aid application required parents’ info if student hadn’t been financially independent for at least 7 years. So school expected parents to help pay. |
Anonymous
My neighbor's kid goes to an upper-mid tier law school. He worked for two years after college (as a paralegal at a big law firm, which was a great idea). Based on conversations I have had with them, I'm fairly sure that he is fully on the hook for everything (I think he got some merit scholarships to help). They have another kid currently at a very expensive undergrad school but I'm guessing that if the law school could put the parents on the hook for at least a bit of tuition, it would. Again - not sure of any of this, but I think that he is independent. It is logical given that he was independently working for two years so was no longer a dependent for taxes. |
Anonymous
And even then you only get grant aid (as opposed to loans) if you're truly, truly needy. This isn't undergrad. |
Anonymous
He said matriculants, not applicants. I believe it. I know a lot of doctors and those studying to be. With almost no exception, they are all wealthy. They’re hard workers for sure, but the lack of financial worry makes it a smoother ride. |
Anonymous
False. Financial aid exists for law school. Once again you fill out the FAFSA. |
Anonymous
This. Harvard has a sliding scale of independent student contribution for more mature students. As the student approaches his or her 30s, the amount of parental expected contribution is lessened. |
Anonymous
| We will be assisting DC for a T4 full freight. He will submit the FAFSA which will provide $50k a year in federal unsubsidized loans. We will provide the rest, which is a lot. Harvard Law is $121k a year for a small dorm room. Total COA if you have an apartment is about $140k or more, so we will pay that minus the $50k. |
Anonymous
My niece’s husband did the reverse - went into the military and then used GI Bill benefits to pay for med school. |
Anonymous
Yea, loans. |
Anonymous
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US MD programs lead to high-paying careers with even the lowest paid fields making 200k+. Loans are fairly easy to pay off in 10-15 years. Most of my adult friends are docs and over half of us paid it all ourselves in the early 2000s and the only one who took a longer time than 15 yrs to payoff had a spouse who was stay at home. The rest of us married other docs or lawyers, often with their own loans but two large incomes is still better than one.
If you keep living expenses low it is not too hard, especially since medical residents make 75-80k now and we made 28-30k then, ie rent was a much higher % of our income ($800-900 a month then, same area is now $1500-1700/mo, East Coast cityish). Merit has also improved in leaps and bounds for top med schools. I went to a T5 and DW went to a T20. My med school gave sizable fellowships to about 1/4 of us based on merit, hers gave smaller merit to about 1/3 of students. We each got merit! Each of our schools gives much more merit now. These days most Top 20 research med schools have large merit scholarships and fellowships sometimes available to all students, other schools students still compete for them as we did. Even T50-75 programs have merit scholarships available. Additionally most schools have some need based aid though it does require lots of need. That was not available in the 2000s, even as a pell grant kid undergrad, no need aid for even top med programs. |
Anonymous
It was very difficult to get independent status even over 25 years ago when I went to law school. I was married and on my own for a number of years and they still wanted to see my single mother's finances. I got some financial aid for law school (basically a scholarship that paid for a little less than half of my tuition) and in those days it was practically unheard of outside merit aid because my family really was dirt poor - the rest I paid for through loans. From what I hear, these days law schools are a bit more generous, but not by a whole lot. |
Anonymous
| My parents paid tuition for law school, and I covered living expenses. I was motivated to do well enough to get paid clerkships after 1L and 2L. Paid off the small loan I took out for first-year living expenses from the big law signing bonus in 3 months of work. Worth noting that although I don't know their exact net worth, it's gotta be over $20m. I would love to help my kids beyond undergrad and while we do okay, we have nowhere near that net worth, so it's probably not happening. |
Anonymous
Depends who you know then. Half of my ivy med school was on loans, the other half had parents paying. I remain in contact with many at the school who are on admissions comm as I once was, and more than half take out loans now. They also have a lot more merit to offer now. No ad comms would know if parents were paying, btw. Only bursar would know. That is BS. Of my current large multispecialty practice, docs aged 33-59, 40% of us took out full loans, the rest had partial to full parent support. |