SAIS: Worth the cost?

[tochigiken]

I've been accepted to SAIS with no scholarships and have also been accepted to an MPA program at NYU, with a scholarship for 50% of my tuition. I've asked some alumni from my undergraduate college who went to SAIS what they thought about the program, and several of them have said that they think it is worth the high cost.

I think that SAIS sounds like a great program, and I would love to go there, but I have no idea how it could be worth the estimated $57,000 per year (which is pretty funny, anyway, considering some of their estimations for housing and travel costs). By my own estimates, if I take out loans for a program like that, I would either need to make about $250,000 a year or I would be paying for it for about 25 years. The former seems very unlikely, and the latter would be insane.

Basically, my question is, am I missing something, or am I right? I strongly suspect that the people who tell me that programs like this are worth the cost are independently wealthy and are simply unaware of how much they (or their parents) paid for it. Is there any way that $130,000/$135,000 (or more, considering the interest that accrues during the program) for a program at SAIS could be worth it?

Thanks!

[jduds]

Student loan repayment calculators:

http://apps.collegeboard.com/fincalc/sla.jsp

http://www.finaid.org/calculators/loanpayments.phtml

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Good luck!

[thereject]

Hi, I was also facing the same dilemma. I was admitted at SAIS with no aid and also at Fletcher with 50% tuition, so far Fletcher has done an excellent job reaching out to is admitted students and connecting you with current students, they also gave me a travel grant. Even though I would have loved to be at SAIS, am leaning towards accepting Fletcher's offer mainly because of their funding package and how friendly they are.

[Cornell07]

Both are fabulous schools. If you check out Fletcher and don't find it to be objectionable (I doubt you will), go there.

One caveat: if your field is finance/econ driven, I would say that my first advise should be taken with a grain of salt as SAIS does offer a superb econ/finance driven course of study.