fibonacci
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Posts posted by fibonacci
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I feel sorry for you people that have more than $50 k in debt. You are probably NEVER going to pay it off. Your best bet it to work the next 10 years in a low paying public service job, then the government will forgive your debts. After interest, most of you with $50k loans will probably be paying closer to $75-100k total.
http://studentaid.ed.gov/PORTALSWebApp/students/english/IBRPlan.jsp
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What I would also LOVE to see is for someone to investigate every major university out there and look under the hood to see what they are really investing in. Do universities really have the gall to invest in SLABS? If they did, that means not only would they be making money off of tuitions and fees on students, they would also be making money on Wall Street through investing in their securitized debts--i.e. they'd be getting paid 2x's for every student. In other words, this would give universities strong incentives to increase their tuitions in order to build up their endowments, all at the expense of putting our children in more and more debt. Our system couldn't be this corrupt and sickening could it?
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Little Timmy walks into a bank and asks for a loan to go to college, goes to college 4 years (every year taking out a loan to pay tuition), gets out and pays back his loans to the bank. That's how it works end of story right? Wrong, big time.
After Timmy walks out of the bank with his loan, the bank packages his debt with a whole bunch of other student loans into what are known as student loan asset backed securities (SLABS). SLABS are then sold to investors on Wall Street who make money off of principal payments and payments on interest. SLABS are also guaranteed by the government, so even if tons of students go into default, these investment instruments will still payout courtesy of Uncle Sam. The capital that is created after the lending banks package and sell SLABS then allows them to go out and issue more loans and repeat the whole process over again. The never ending flow of credit and loans then allows colleges to raise their tuitions almost every single year at hyperinflationary rates.
The only ones screwed in the whole process are students. They are the ones loaded up with all the debt so that everyone else can make a HUGE profit off them. No wonder the banking industry spent large sums of money to lobby politicians to make student debt impossible to get rid of--by not allowing students to get rid of debt, it cuts down on the risk of SLABS and guarantees that investors get paid. Open your eyes, you are just a pawn to the system built to make the rich more wealthy while they offer you the American "dream", which in reality, is nothing more than a nightmare. A big portion of people that invest in SLABS aren't even American, they're European. In other words, people who are far, far away, that don't even care about our country or our youth, have vested interest in trying to drive up tuition costs as much as possible here and want to see our kids loaded up with as much non-dischargeable student loan debt as possible! Outrageous. Infuriating. True. Just like the article below says, I guess this wouldn't be America though if you couldn't monetize and gamble on your children's debt and futures on Wall Street.
Read about the whole scam right here in this excellent article, you really should since you, the taxpayer, are on the hook once this giant bubble explodes:
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Well you could always try craigslist.com(if you aren't familiar w/ that website being an international student) , go to the baltimore listings and look. Just be careful, you will find some scammers and crazy people on there. There are also websites you can use to find housemates or apartments.
I haven't heard back from JHU yet with regards to matriculation info, courses, etc. I guess the department that is in charge of doing background checks is extremely busy right now. I was under the impression that they were going to send out a list of everyone coming into the program (my department at least), that way everyone can contact each other to see if anyone would like to split a place.
Or you could always do Reed Hall. Not sure how expensive it is yet, and I heard it is a hole (old and dilapidated). I'm sure you could do better living off campus. What better way anyway to experience a city than living off campus?
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Haven't read through the whole thread, but does anyone know where the good alternative music spotsare in the city to see some acts?
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BME
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So has anyone started to make any final decisions? I still have 2 more schools and 1 wait list to hear back from but my top school (as of now) wants a decision by the end of March. The problem is that I won't hear back from the school that I am wait listed at until early April, which also happens to be the only school I would pick over my current top choice. Hmmm
Schools should NOT be pressuring students to make their decisions before April 15th. There is pretty much a 'gentleman's agreement' between most, if not all schools that they will abide by the April 15th deadline. It's pretty obvious that if schools can figure out who is actually accepting and rejecting their offers, they can more quickly figure out who to take next off their waiting list and workout all the funding issues. Too bad, that's their problem, not yours. Schools should not be making students decide early. You should be reporting schools that are pressuring students to decide early to the heads of the departments at other universities you've interviewed at. I believe there is some sort of panel that they'll get reported to and from which they may receive reprimand from. You can imagine what will happen if more and more schools stop abiding by the April 15th deadline. It will lead to complete anarchy during the admissions process for future applicants and kids won't know what to do when acceptances start rolling in (or not). Ask for an extension at least, they SHOULD give it to you.
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I'm sure there have already been a million topics on something like this, but I'm a bit conflicted...
So I got into the Ph.D. program in the joint Biomedical Engineering department at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, Raleigh.
I also got into the M.S. program in Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University, mostly due to the fact that my GPA was too low for a Ph.D. I'm still thankful to get an M.S. offer.
So right now I'm leaning towards Columbia just cause I've always wanted to live in New York and also cause it's more prestigious and a better BioE program overall.
However, I'm getting no funding at Columbia, whereas my Ph.D. offer at UNC-NCSU is fully funded + stipend.
My goal is to work in the biomedical devices industry, but I'm still not sure whether I want just an M.S. or a full on Ph.D. Some people say a Ph.D. would be good while others say that an M.S. is better cause a lot of times Ph.D.s are overqualified and it's harder to get a job these days.
Any opinions/suggestions?
p.s. I'm still waiting on 5 schools for Ph.D.
Forget Columbia, you are going to be saddled witth huge amounts of debt after you graduate. You are nothing more than a big cash cow. Also factor in the extremely high cost of living in NYC and you can be talking about in excess of $50k in loans after you are done. Most students who have never had a real job or have never entered the job market before erroneously assume that they'll be able to payoff such debt afterwards because there should be a job out there for them. The real world doesn't work that way. Many students have trouble finding jobs or even holding them. I can not stress enough how much of a massive headache student loans are for you when you lose your job and have to choose either being behind on rent or your student loans. I've seen it happen to some of my friends with $60k in loans after they lost their job. In reality with a MS degree you could probably expect to make around $55-60k (only about $35k after tax, health care, 401k contribution) to start off w/ no experience. Would you be prepared for $500+ student loans per month? Don't believe the propaganda, student loan debt is not good debt because you are investing in yourself, it is burdensome debt. I don't think I will even be able to own a house until I'm close to 50 and may never start a family because of student loans.
Make the wise decision and go to school completely free on someone elses dime. NYC will always be there and you can move there afterwards debt free. Also, when it comes to industry, your pedigree doesn't even matter all that much. After 5 years in industry you probably won't even be listing where you got your degrees from anymore on your resume but will rather be focusing on your job experience. Employers will care more about your experience with instrumentation/computers/software much more than the school you went to. You can get that experience at any school and through a COOP/internship. Why would you saddle yourself with debt that is going to take 20 years to payoff for a degree that noone in industry will care about anymore after you work 5 years?
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so are you going to hopkins?
I need to think about it more. Rutgers' name isn't as associated with as much w/ prestige as Hopkins, but Rutgers has some pretty big heavy weights in terms of famous professors and has the best connections w/ industry out of any school I've seen yet. In fact it who you study under may be more important than where you actually go. This is a very tough decision. 10 years from now I think we may see rutgers in the top 10. University of Michigan was very good as well. This is the hardest decision ever.
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Jhu came out w/ decisions. Looks like maryland and purdue also.
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Wow I never realized how vastly underrated Rutgers' BME program is. They are giving Michigan and Hopkins a run for their money since my primary goal is to go into industry. Rutgers is heavily focused on getting research done in the lab into actual products on the market. Holy crap I'm pretty nervous about meeting Dr. Kohn at the interviews tomorrow. He's a HUGE name and heads some of the Pentagon's research on regenerative medicine. Quite the impressive resume.
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Completely not worth it if you don't have the funding. Don't kill yourself with student loans. You'd be surprised how hard they are to pay back once you are in the real world.
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Got the acceptance letter from Michigan today.
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Applied to:
U of MD
Hopkins
Ga Tech
U of Mich
Rutgers
UVA
Purdue
Nat. U of Singapore
CMU
Heard Back from:
Michigan heard from in Dec/Jan and interviewed in Feb, heard from Hopkins in Feb going for interview next week, heard from Rutgers in Feb going for interview on the 18th, and heard from UVA in Feb and will interview on the 25th although that isn't a normally scheduled interview. The rest of the schools I have not heard back from nor have I received a rejection letter from. From what I heard at interviews, Ga Tech has given out some acceptances already. I made a mistake submitting my app with regards to providing proof of citizenship to Ga Tech which has delayed my app, so I think it cost me dearly.
The DIRTY BUSINESS of college education
in The Lobby
Posted · Edited by fibonacci
Yup just as I feared:
http://www.regulations.utah.edu/administration/guidelines_3/endowmentPool.html
universities are free to invest as any other investor would. They are simply limited to the same regulations as any of us by our regulating body for securities in our given location. I found this in several seconds online. Basically this document states they are free to invest in anything considered "fair game" by their securities regulator, when you jump to the securities regulators legal documents it will state that SLABS are infact fair game. Conflict of interest from a students prospective absolutely, do they who knows, but the fact remains--they're allowed. it will be a maze of paper work trying to figure out if they do, but if one finds out universities make a ton of profit off SLABS how much does that say our system is corrupt? 20 or 30 years ago only the absolute elite institutions had big endowments. These days there are way more univsersities with small names that have tons of endowments. Coincidence? Or are universities motivated by 2xs the proffit per student?