[16s]

My advice is to go to a college that you can afford. I spent my first two years at a local community college and transferred 60 credit hours (about half of what's needed to graduate) to a large state university where I graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors and I only had about 15K in student loan debt. I could have avoided the loans entirely if I had worked a few more part time jobs.

You don't have to go to a high-priced private university for four years to have a good career (that you enjoy) and live a nice life.

[tzs]

That $15k in student loan debt is higher than the average loan debt at graduation at many high-priced private universities. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Caltech all average $10k or under, and MIT and Stanford average under $15k.

The averages are the averages of those who borrowed, which for most of those schools is about 50% of the students (about 25% at Princeton), so half the students at these high-priced private schools are graduating without any debt.

These are 2010 numbers. The numbers are probably lower now at some of them. Stanford, for instance, waives tuition completely for students whose families make under $100k.

By all means consider affordability when choosing a school--but don't assume that you can't easily afford a high-priced private university just because the sticker price is in the stratosphere.

[steverb]

Also, if you weren't the best student in high school, community college will give you a chance to establish a better track record.

I was an average student in HS (3.0 GPA), but I buckled down at CC and got my GPA up high enough to score an academic scholarship (full tuition) when I moved on to university through Phi Theta Kappa.