First year undergrad living on campus
Fall 2025 awards
- Fed Pell 3698
- Fed sub loan 1750
- Fed unsub 1000
- Fed unsub plus 2000
Spring 2026 awards
- fed pell 3697
- fed sub 1750
- fed unsub 1000
- fed unsub plus 2000
total aid: $16,895
Remaining balance ~19.5k
Are private loans my only option for my child?
byu/Division2226 inStudentLoans
Posted by Division2226
8 Comments
A cheaper school is your best option. $100k in loans for an undergrad is likely a bad plan.
They’re almost done with the year then. Yeah, too late for scholarships when there’s like 2 months left. I hope you can get a private loan for an academic year you’re mostly through, that wouldn’t work for a federal loan. I only took out one tiny private loan and I did it early, so no experience with this.
Change schools, I’d even recommend a community college. You’re kid might be upset now, but once they graduate college with little to no loans, they will be thankful.
$16/hr at 25 hours a week average is about 20k for a year. Can they work throughout the year and pay for it? They could do 10 hours a week, and more hours in the summer. Do not do private loans. They are killing me. I have 109k private loan debt because I got sick halfway through my engineering degree. It accumulated interest until I was able to graduate from a cheaper school. I was going to have a $1300/mo payment for forever, but my dad consolidated and now I am at $900/mo for 20 years. Starbucks will also pay for a degree upfront with only 20 hours a week of work.
You can borrow Parent PLUS loans up to the cost of attendance, but you shouldn’t. This school is unfortunately too expensive.
Private student loans are predatory. They are a particularly bad idea for students coming from a Pell grant eligible household, since these students are coming from families with the least financial resources.
Step zero is to find an affordable path to earn the degree. This may entail starting at the local community college.
The max amount of federal student loans is plenty for a student to pay back for an undergraduate degree.
Personally, I’d find a less expensive school, or find alternate options. For example, the child could go to community college for the first two years, then transfer into the 4-year college for the last 2 and matriculation. I recommend this to most people who we are looking at paying a substantial amount out-of-pocket for college.
Unless the university is fairly prestigious and the degree is something that can do the heavy lifting for job searches (mechanical engineering versus English lit, for example), it’s rarely a good idea to end undergrad with six-figure debt.
If you qualified for unsub, which means you were able to secure a parent plus loan, it is unlikely that you’re be able to get a private loan.