For those of you who do not know me, my name is Adam, and I am one of Jordan’s brothers. Like Jordan, I borrowed student loans to earn my undergraduate and graduate degrees. After eight years of college and medical school, I definitely accumulated my fair share of student debt. While my brother Jordan was able to eliminate all of his student debt in a few short years through strategies discussed on this website (yay for him!), my story is a little different. Although I cannot offer you a narrative about totally paying off my student loans, I can try and convey some wisdom I have so far learned along the way.
But first, a little background information. I grew up in suburban New Jersey with my parents, older twin brothers, and my co-triplet brothers Jordan and Bradley. We definitely grew up more affluent than most. In fact, my older brothers’ undergraduate educations were paid for in full thanks to a profitable family business. Our family’s finances, however, significantly changed during my early high school years, and my co-triplet brothers and I quickly realized that we would not be so lucky.
When it came to paying for college, we admittedly had little knowledge about financial aid options. I only applied to one school, Washington University in St. Louis, and was lucky to get accepted via early decision. I knew I wanted to be a doctor, so I picked this college partially because of its medical school’s reputation, but also because the campus and dorm rooms were amazing. It did not even occur to me that WashU was a private university, and that to attend it, I would need to spend significantly more than I would if I were to attend a public university in my home state of New Jersey.
With the help of my high school guidance counselor, I applied for financial aid. I was not expecting much, but I figured it was better to apply for financial aid than just twiddling my thumbs and paying the full cost of tuition myself. WashU soon notified me that I was awarded a merit-based scholarship worth one hundred thousand dollars. I was ecstatic, and I doubt such significant financial assistance would have been available at a public university.
While the financial aid package was generous, it certainly did not cover the entire cost of four years of a private undergraduate education (which at the time equated to fifty thousand dollars a year). My pre-medicine books alone cost nearly a thousand dollars per semester. So, I sucked it up, and applied for government loans, both subsidized and unsubsidized. Since these loans did not fully cover my educational costs, I also took out two private loans, one during my freshman year worth fourteen thousand dollars, and one during my sophomore year worth twelve thousand dollars.
As I continued my education, though, I did not like the idea of borrowing additional high-interest loans. I therefore took two main steps: I moved off campus, and I got a job (well really, jobs). Room and board at my university cost about twelve thousand dollars per year, and so for my junior year, I moved to an off-campus apartment. Admittedly, it was an old, rather disgusting walk-up apartment in an “iffy” area of St. Louis (my car was broken into no less than three times), but it only cost me about three hundred dollars per month to rent.
I then started looking for work-study jobs, since I figured that my most difficult pre-med classes were behind me, and I had a little extra time to try and earn additional money. I first worked as an assistant for a professor in the Anthropology Department. This essentially involved me writing personal emails, booking the professor’s travel, and helping with PowerPoint presentations (she had carpal tunnel at the time, and could not type, but hey, it was overall a pretty easy gig). After that, I worked as an assistant archivist in one of the school’s libraries. It was boring work, as my main job was removing staples from century-old documents for the sole purpose of then scanning them into the library’s electronic database.
In addition to these jobs, I also worked part-time at the campus bookstore at the beginning and end of each semester. I not only got paid by the hour, but I also had first dibs on selling my used books back to the store, and I received a twenty percent discount when purchasing new books. With these odd jobs, I ultimately did not have to borrow any additional private loans for the rest of my college career. By the time I graduated, I had accumulated forty thousand dollars in student debt, which all things considered, seemed not too shabby.
Like my brother Jordan, I was then faced with the task of paying for a graduate education all by myself. I soon realized that scholarships and financial aid were not as readily available in medical school as they were in college. During the medical school application process, I decided to become a Florida resident (my brother and father were living there at the time), since there were more medical schools in Florida than in New Jersey, and most of the medical schools there offered in-state tuition discounts. After a months-long process involving several waitlists, I was ultimately accepted to the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s Regional Campus.
In order to pay for the expensive medical school tuition, which was still around fifty thousand dollars per year despite the ten thousand dollar in-state discount, I again utilized government loans. I ultimately applied for the maximum of fifty-five thousand dollars per year. To minimize expenses, I then spent my first two years of medical school residing with my family, which provided me with a rent-free living situation. After four years of college life, this was not the most palatable decision, but it certainly saved me money.
Halfway into my first year of medical school, however, I started paying for many of my housing expenses, under circumstances that I will elaborate on in future articles. I was not expecting this, and I wanted to avoid utilizing any more private loans. I therefore decided to look on the most legitimate, innocent, job-posting website that I could think of, otherwise known as Craigslist. I applied for the first normal-sounding job that I saw, which was for a local tutoring company. Thanks to my medical school resume, I got the job, and within months, I was teaching SAT and ACT preparatory courses, in addition to tutoring students in a wide array of Advanced Placement classes.
All told, I still graduated medical school with a significant amount of debt. When I started residency, I knew I had to pace myself in paying back my student loans. Although this may come as a shock, a resident’s salary is painfully dismal. I therefore applied for income based-repayment, which I am still enrolled in to this day.
In the end, I may not be the “student debt slayer” that my brother Jordan is. In fact, I still have significant student debt (gasp!). But I hope I can explain to you all why I don’t really care about this. In future articles, I will explore the ways I lessened my student debt burden. I will discuss my experiences living at home while attending medical school, seeking out oddball jobs, applying for financial aid, and renegotiating the original terms of loans to minimize the burden of student debt. I also hope to shed light on some obstacles I have so far faced during my student debt journey, as I think many of you will be able to relate to these experiences.
Stay tuned for future articles, and feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about my student debt story.
Adam Rothman is a guest writer for Student Debt Diaries and is currently a medical professional in the New York City area. He is a brother of Jordan Rothman, the founder of Student Debt Diaries. You can reach Adam through email at adam@studentdebtdiaries.com
Thanks for sharing, Adam. Great story.