Hinkleymustang wrote:The difference is 30 thousand dollars in student loans. That is 30,000 dollars. What increase in salary do you think a kid would see from moving from a T4 to a T2? As a transfer it will be negligible. In my view transferring in this situation will result in a job that pays about the same, i.e. poor. The problem is we have no way of knowing what a student can expect to get paid upon graduation, the U.S. New rankings are not exactly true and even if they were, the employment statistics do not reflect the current legal economy.
Now here is the breakdown of salary required to maintain a 170 v 140k loan. You can get this info at finaid.org.
170k at 30 years at 6.8% (which is good for a consolidated loan)
Monthly Loan Payment: $1,108.27
Number of Payments: 361
Cumulative Payments: $398,980.53
Total Interest Paid: $228,980.53
If you use 10% of your income to repay this loan it is estimated that you will need to make 132k. If you use 15% to repay then you need to make 88k a year. You would need to make this in order to avoid financial hardship.
Now there are other things that can be adjusted, family size etc., but this is a good start for our purposes. The main thing that should jump out at you is that you thought you were borrowing 170k, but you really ended up paying nearly 399k back.
Now try 140 same terms as before.
Monthly Loan Payment: $912.70
Number of Payments: 360
Cumulative Payments: $328,566.44
Total Interest Paid: $188,566.44
If you use 10% of your income to repay this loan it is estimated that you will need to make 109k. If you use 15% to repay then you need to make 73k a year.
Now here is the big difference you just saved yourself over 70,000 dollars and you will not be required to make nearly as much. Look at the total interest paid, in interest alone you save around 40k. So now before you are so quick to pay an extra 30k, which is really 70k, are you confident that Rutgers or whatever can put you in a position to make 132k a year? 88k a year? Makaf2000 said he wanted to work for a firm or the government. Sadly a government job is not going to get it done; government salary can be less the 60k. So that leaves big law or a medium sized firm. I am not so confident that a transfer student to Rutgers, which is ranked what 80??, is going to be able to land a big enough job. Rutgers is a great school, but in this legal economy nothing is guaranteed. So I would stay put and try to get a in a government honors program or a smaller size firm that pays close to 70 a year.
The real problem is that law students are continually willing to pay more just for rank when the payoff simply is not there. Take a look at this Above the Law article. I am not sure if you are familiar with ATL, but they have been running several articles on student debt and poor educational choices.
http://abovethelaw.com/2010/07/even-u-s ... law_inline
IBR, especially for Gov., makes the above moot.
