Student Loans: a cautionary tale in today's environment

[u/calonmawr10]

I got into my dream school with a decent scholarship a couple weeks after the stock market crashed in 2008. My parents had saved diligently for myself and my twin sister in a 529 account, but we saw that get cut in half overnight. Despite all that, my mom told me to pick the school that would work best for me and to not worry about the cost because "we'd figure out a way to make it work". I applied for hundreds of external scholarships, but didn't get any. So, I chose my expensive private dream school, signed my life away to Sallie Mae (the solution to pay for it after my savings was exhausted, which I didn't know in advance), and started college in fall of 2009.

I was lucky to graduate with a good job thanks to the school's incredible co-op program, but also saddled with $120k worth of loans ($30k federal, the rest private). I met my amazing husband while there, and he was in the same boat. Together, we make a pretty decent living, but we currently owe more on our student loans than we do on our house. Even paying an extra $1k/month (our breakeven with our budget), it'll still take us many years to pay them off. It's so incredibly frustrating watching our friends from school (most of whom don't have loans) be able to live their lives the way they want while we continue to be slaves to our loans for the foreseeable future. No switching jobs because we want a new career, that doesn't pay enough. No moving to a different city, can't afford the hit to the salary in cheaper areas, or the huge cost of living increase in more expensive ones.

I'm happy with my life and that I was able to have the experiences I did (I absolutely loved my school), but not a day goes by that I don't wonder how my life would have been different if I'd made better financial decisions. Parents, don't tell your kids to follow their hearts if the only way there is through massive student loans, particularly if their career will not let them have any hope of paying them off. Students, have those conversations with your parents. If they say don't worry about it, question what that means and what the plan is. Now is the time to be having those discussions, before you've already registered for classes and are looking to pay that first bill. Don't make the same mistakes we did.

Edit:added paragraph breaks

Edit 2: Wow, I did not expect this to blow up so much! Thank you for the awards! It's reassuring (and a bit sad) to hear so many of your stories that are so similar to mine. For all the parents and high school students reading this, please take some time to go through the comments and see how many people this truly affects. Take time to weigh your college financial decisions carefully, whether that be for a 4 year school, community college, or trade school, and ask questions when you don't know or understand something. I hope with this post that everyone is more empowered to make the best decision for them :)

[u/[deleted]]

I am a clarinetist graduating from a state school with a degree in music education in 2 weeks- show him this comment if you like. I flirted with doing performance multiple times especially since I specialize in bass and contrabass clarinet and am quite good now, but I digress.

Your relative is an idiot and here is why, from a music standpoint (which may hold more sway than straight cash money)

UNLESS he is studying with Yehuda Gilad at USC, this investment in his undergrad will NOT be worth it. "Undergrad is undergrad" is a VERY popular statement amongst performance majors. It literally does NOT matter where you do your undergrad provided you have a good relationship with your clarinet professor and you regularly attend summer festivals (5k each, usually, and you can't work during them, an added expense) where you get to meet and work with countless world famous teachers who frequently use summer festivals to filter potential grad students.

His undergrad schools won't tell him this, but where you really get your moneys worth in performance is absolutely in grad school- because undergrad is next to worthless if you want a legit job doing what he loves. There's NO way he will get a performance gig with just a BS, even if its from Julliard. That's not real and he should NOT assume he will be the exception. There are SO MANY amazing clarinetists out there, he is one of literal thousands in his exact position.

It is all about the teacher, not the school. Nobody cares where you go to undergrad, all they care about is grad school and guess what- if he is gonna be 120k in debt from your undergrad, he won't be going to summer festivals much less grad school at ALL. He is literally SO fucked because NOBODY explained to him how performance degrees actually work, and they wont, because schools like that want kids to pay 120k so they can continue offering free rides to kids that are actually good enough to be there. Unless he has a free ride, they are using him as a cash cow and he needs to know that.

I go to a tiny state school in Wisconsin and I know multiple people who majored in performance who left here to do grad school in places like Indiana Jacobs School of Music, Eastman, Rice University, Curtis Institute of Music and USC and who gig regularly with Disney and Broadway and are winning auditions all over the place based on previous performance experience they wouldn't have gotten if they did their undergrad somewhere where everyone was better than them. They have professional references AND the references of their teachers- who actually also happen to be well known (because they went to grad school with the mf's teaching at Curtis. Or in the case of our trumpet professor- ACTUALLY TAUGHT THE GUY WHO TEACHES IU'S JAZZ STUDIES. YEAH. HE WENT HERE TOO. A STATE SCHOOL.)

Undergrad really is just undergrad- they got all these opportunities in grad school they could afford since they played it smart early. They had real, paid performance gigs since they were 18 because they went somewhere that wasn't hypersaturated by 1,000 GRAD STUDENTS From Eastman, Julliard, Curtis, etc. That also looks good as hell on a grad school app.

I feel awful for him since nobody took the time to sit him down and explain this. If he wants to spend big dollars, he needs to do it for grad school. Undergrad alone won't get him anywhere no matter where he goes- unless they're gonna give him a full ride, he isn't actually good enough to be there anyway since they're using his tuition to pay for the kids they actually believe will be successful. Its all a big fat game and the sooner he figures that TF out, the better. You can be successful in clarinet performance- but this is not the way to do that and anyone who is actually employed doing anything but teaching lessons is likely to tell him the same. Its all about the teacher, not the school, and not all the best teachers teach at those top 15 schools.

Anyway, this is getting too wordy, but I've played the game. I will get to go to grad school if I wish. I got to sit in 10 person classes with instrumentalists contracted to tour on Broadway (or at least were, before corona). People who performed the movie tracks for The Incredibles. My friend starred in our opera as an undergrad and now goes to IU as a grad student with an assistantship and is starring on an opera there in the fall. State schools are well worth it in music, and anyone who tells you different is absolutely full of shit. You just have to pick the right one.

[u/tumblrmustbedown → u/[deleted]]

He’s actually going to Eastman to study under Ken Grant. It was between that and UT Austin. Unfortunately he’s already accepted and paid his enrollment fee / declined Texas because he won’t listen to anyone. I wish I’d posted about this and been able to show him before he locked in. None of us agreed with that decision and tried desperately to explain it, but he just kept saying that the clarinet teachers at Eastman and his high school (Interlochen, where he did get a free ride) said it was worth it. Ain’t no way in hell. He has a friend who did their music degree at UT and is doing their masters at Eastman now - we said why doesn’t he do the same? His reply was that the friend said that it was totally worth it to just take the debt and “Texas student body is toxic.” He was not interested in listening to a word we said, and instead he started a GoFundMe to try and get his tuition paid. Ridiculous. I think a large part of it was that his Interlochen friend group is attending Julliard/Berklee/Cleveland and he wanted to be in the northeast with them / didn’t want what he perceives to be embarrassment that he didn’t go to the same level School.

[u/[deleted] → u/tumblrmustbedown]

They'd be eating his shorts in 6 years if he went to Austin or similar. He really should have auditioned at USC or Arizona, if he gave one fuck about his own personal success as a clarinetist.... damn. He might actually have not gotten in, I think they are more competitive than Eastman right now.

He got in, anyway. That should be all the validation he needs. Eastman doesn't even truly want him or they'd have given him fat scholarships. I guarantee all his friends are in the same boat. This kid is an idiot lol

[u/tumblrmustbedown → u/[deleted]]

He didn’t get an audition at USC, he did apply. One of his classmates did. I think they only audition 12 students? Or 4? Something kinda wild. Didn’t apply at Arizona as far as I’m aware. He also didn’t get into Rice, though he did audition. I tried to get him to apply to IU (my SO is from Bloomington - I’m actually there right now) but he didn’t. I am a lot older and pretty much doing the opposite of music, so I don’t think he held my opinion with any weight.

[u/[deleted] → u/tumblrmustbedown]

If he didn't get into Rice he ain't got no business going to Eastman with no scholarship. This boy is about to have a very rude awakening when he shows up there and everyone has scholarships and can play circles around him.... Interlochen be damned. IU is a public, state school and is one of the best in the world for music.... chances are he wouldn't have gotten in there either. If he did his homework he would have applied for IU and Arizona. They are way better for what he wants to do anyway. I just think he didn't think literally any of this through nor does he have a realistic idea of the summer festivals he will have to attend to have a hope of getting a job someday, Eastman undergrad degree or not....

Money can get you fairly far in music but not all the way. That's the beauty of it- at some point, it doesn't matter how much $ you have, because if you are actually really just that good, work that hard, and have good professional/personal connections, you'll beat money every time. It has faaaar less to do with the name of your school than the person you study with. Nobody gives a damn if you have 120k in debt if you don't play as well as some kid from the middle of nowhere who goes to a state school. I sincerely hope this kid figures that out and screws his head on straight. An Eastman education without huge scholarships just means you are either rich or stupid. It doesn't mean you're good, and everyone in music who knows what they're talking about knows that lol. I wish him luck, honestly I do, music is so hard no matter where you go and requires a lot of work and dedication.