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Hi everyone, 
I’m highly considering applying to PA school within the next near or two. My biggest deterrent is the fact that I already have about 100k in loans (B.A. and M.S. degrees ), and going back to PA school would put the total between 200-250k (?) which seems insurmountable to me. I was hoping someone could give me any advice/input/personal experiences! It would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

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It's a lot of debt and very well may be insurmountable.  It's a reasonable estimate.

I highly recommend going to studentloans.gov and use the repayment calculator.  With that much debt your monthly payments on the standard plan are around $3000.  If you make $100k/yr as a new grad (an average estimate) your take home pay is....around $8000 before taxes, more like $5000-5500/month after taxes.  If $3k goes to loans, can you live on $2k?  And save for retirement?  Or support a family?  Or save to buy a house?  Or take vacations?  OR any number of things adults do?

It's hard to make extra payments when you owe that much.  There are NOT a lot of ways to help pay for PA school.  NHSC is very competitive.  You can try to do something like PSLF but that's not guaranteed and forces you to take certain positions that qualify.

You should VERY seriously consider this factor when deciding what to do.

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10 minutes ago, MT2PA said:

It's a lot of debt and very well may be insurmountable.  It's a reasonable estimate.

I highly recommend going to studentloans.gov and use the repayment calculator.  With that much debt your monthly payments on the standard plan are around $3000.  If you make $100k/yr as a new grad (an average estimate) your take home pay is....around $8000 before taxes, more like $5000-5500/month after taxes.  If $3k goes to loans, can you live on $2k?  And save for retirement?  Or support a family?  Or save to buy a house?  Or take vacations?  OR any number of things adults do?

It's hard to make extra payments when you owe that much.  There are NOT a lot of ways to help pay for PA school.  NHSC is very competitive.  You can try to do something like PSLF but that's not guaranteed and forces you to take certain positions that qualify.

You should VERY seriously consider this factor when deciding what to do.

Thanks for the reply. I’ve heard a lot of people tell me to do PSLF but I understand it’s sort of unreliable and hard to qualify for. And doing income based repayment would barely be cutting into the principal loan based on the amount of interest that will accrue.

I’m considering getting a house in the next 5 years and possibly starting a family as well.

I have been thinking about PA school/taking prerequites this for 2  years or so now, and the idea of “quitting” makes me sick, but what makes me more sick is thinking about the debt I will be in for many years to come and limiting my ability to contribute towards other things such as retirement.

I have been asking my Dad for advice, whom I trust and I believe is good with finances, but he keeps telling me not to worry about it and it’ll eventually get it paid off, but makes it sound easier said than done.

Not really sure what my next move it. Been looking into other careers at this point but also kinda lost in that regard. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

100k is certainly a large debt-load - depending on your loan types these will continue to gain interest during PA school and all PA school loans accrue interest while in the program. You could end up adding tens of thousands of debt just during your program. At 250k you will have close to the average debt load of physicians but be paid at most half of what they make for a salary. Not to pry but about how much are you making currently and in what role what are your bachelors and masters degrees in and when did you get them. To me it doesn't make much sense financially unless you would want to enter/apply for the military or NHSC programs.

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