Debt and C&F
Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2013 3:25 pm
This is very unsettling. I had no idea that C&F could not admit you for excessive debt.
This story concerns me. As I understand it, part of the decision was that he continued to take a part-time job in lieu of full time employment.
I work part-time right now as a tutor, in part because I'm studying for the LSAT, in part because I'm studying for personal trainer certification and in part because full-time jobs would make doing both very difficult. I get about $100-150/week. The worst was 9 months ago, when I had to pay back 3 months in loans because a loan servicer had contacted me entirely via snail mail and not email and so I didn't realize the servicer existed at all.
Having read about people who passed C&F with DUIs and other things, I doubt C&F would care about this. It seems like in the cases they've assessed, the person has been delinquent for 9 months in a row or something ridiculous. Occasionally I am delinquent on student payments by about 10 days, but some months I'll pay 2 months of payments in advance. But that's because I had no idea C&F even took into account debt payments at all, so in the future I'll be more diligent about it. Until now I haven't had a reason to care.
However, the part about "a plan to pay back the loans" worries me. Most people seem to have no more of a "plan" than I do -- of my 300 or so facebook friends, the only person who was even remotely familiar with LS employment stats was a person who tutors the LSAT for income. The rest think LS *at all* is a great career opportunity, no matter what institution. The types who research careers to the degree that people on TLS do are rare.
The reason I considered attending law school in the first place is because I have a BA in philosophy from a fourth-tier institution that I attended, in part, because it was a LSDAS GPA-booster and I came there from a school with a low GPA. It was expensive and I incurred a lot of debt ($90k), but I went there because it was a certainty and because I had extrapolated my career possibilities in high school (~5 years ago) based on the same salary/employment information that law schools are now being criticized for publishing. However, I've been out of this for about a year now, avoiding law school in part because the data is much more damning than it used to be. I live in south Texas and jobs which pay $40k/year that I can get with my degree are not common. Even something seemingly secure like teaching in high school requires $5k and a few months study for a low-level certificate, then another year of probationary teaching.
I realize that Tucker Max's "don't go to law school" essay has a section about humanities degree jobs. But then, he hasn't had to job hunt with one. Every job that is a certainty is, at most, $25k/year, and only a few $30-35k/year jobs even seem remotely within possibility. Unless I live with my parents for 3 years, this would not allow me to pay back my debt in any serious capacity and seems like garbage for the long-term, so I've avoided doing it, since the minimum yearly amount I could make and still make rent / pay the loans would be $27k. Debt-to-income ratios would suggest that 60k with 180k in debt is the same as 30k with 90k in debt, but that's not true: with a 60-70k job, your rent and living costs do not have to scale to your income.
I take the C&F decision to mean that the person who continues to work at the part-time job who has "no plan" has not considered his living situation at all and has not taken into account the decisions he/she could be making. But I've analyzed my situation to death, and law seems like a better long-term plan than my current options, because income from law scales upward better than the jobs I could get with a fourth-tier humanities BA.
Is my analysis wrong here? Should I have reason to worry? I don't think I do, but I'd like to be sure.
This story concerns me. As I understand it, part of the decision was that he continued to take a part-time job in lieu of full time employment.
I work part-time right now as a tutor, in part because I'm studying for the LSAT, in part because I'm studying for personal trainer certification and in part because full-time jobs would make doing both very difficult. I get about $100-150/week. The worst was 9 months ago, when I had to pay back 3 months in loans because a loan servicer had contacted me entirely via snail mail and not email and so I didn't realize the servicer existed at all.
Having read about people who passed C&F with DUIs and other things, I doubt C&F would care about this. It seems like in the cases they've assessed, the person has been delinquent for 9 months in a row or something ridiculous. Occasionally I am delinquent on student payments by about 10 days, but some months I'll pay 2 months of payments in advance. But that's because I had no idea C&F even took into account debt payments at all, so in the future I'll be more diligent about it. Until now I haven't had a reason to care.
However, the part about "a plan to pay back the loans" worries me. Most people seem to have no more of a "plan" than I do -- of my 300 or so facebook friends, the only person who was even remotely familiar with LS employment stats was a person who tutors the LSAT for income. The rest think LS *at all* is a great career opportunity, no matter what institution. The types who research careers to the degree that people on TLS do are rare.
The reason I considered attending law school in the first place is because I have a BA in philosophy from a fourth-tier institution that I attended, in part, because it was a LSDAS GPA-booster and I came there from a school with a low GPA. It was expensive and I incurred a lot of debt ($90k), but I went there because it was a certainty and because I had extrapolated my career possibilities in high school (~5 years ago) based on the same salary/employment information that law schools are now being criticized for publishing. However, I've been out of this for about a year now, avoiding law school in part because the data is much more damning than it used to be. I live in south Texas and jobs which pay $40k/year that I can get with my degree are not common. Even something seemingly secure like teaching in high school requires $5k and a few months study for a low-level certificate, then another year of probationary teaching.
I realize that Tucker Max's "don't go to law school" essay has a section about humanities degree jobs. But then, he hasn't had to job hunt with one. Every job that is a certainty is, at most, $25k/year, and only a few $30-35k/year jobs even seem remotely within possibility. Unless I live with my parents for 3 years, this would not allow me to pay back my debt in any serious capacity and seems like garbage for the long-term, so I've avoided doing it, since the minimum yearly amount I could make and still make rent / pay the loans would be $27k. Debt-to-income ratios would suggest that 60k with 180k in debt is the same as 30k with 90k in debt, but that's not true: with a 60-70k job, your rent and living costs do not have to scale to your income.
I take the C&F decision to mean that the person who continues to work at the part-time job who has "no plan" has not considered his living situation at all and has not taken into account the decisions he/she could be making. But I've analyzed my situation to death, and law seems like a better long-term plan than my current options, because income from law scales upward better than the jobs I could get with a fourth-tier humanities BA.
Is my analysis wrong here? Should I have reason to worry? I don't think I do, but I'd like to be sure.