Last week, I discussed how I received scholarships, grants, and financial aid to cover most of the cost of attending college. This week’s post is not going to be as uplifting. Rather, I will discuss how I debt-financed most of my law-school education to the tune of around $150,000 when you consider the effect of capitalizing interest. My story has a happy ending, and I was able to pay off my law school and college student debt within a reasonable amount of time. And hopefully my narrative will also be instructive for people considering how they too will finance their law school educations.
Like most people applying to law school, I submitted applications to many different institutions. I applied to reach schools to which I had almost a zero chance of being accepted. I also applied to a few “safety schools” that would almost certainly accept me. Eventually, I was accepted to several decent law schools, and a few of these institutions even awarded me merit scholarships to cover most of the cost of tuition.
However, something compelled me to accept a seat at the highest-ranked law school that admitted me. Maybe I was chasing prestige, or maybe I just wanted to live in a different part of the country. Whatever, the reason, I eventually accepted a spot off the waitlist at Washington and Lee University School of Law, and I attended my first year of law school at this institution.
W&L Law offered me no merit scholarships whatsoever. The institution also did not have a need-based financial aid program, so I eventually had to pay full price to attend this law school. I tried to minimize my costs, and I was even accepted to be a Resident Advisor at the school. As a result, if I stayed there for a second year, I would have received free housing and a stipend to supervise students residing in the university’s residence halls. The cost of living in Lexington, VA, where Washington and Lee University is located, is also unbelievably low, and I was mostly able to use savings to pay for food, textbooks, alcohol, and other things that law students need. However, I eventually borrowed around $54,000 to finance my first year of law school.
The major way I tried to minimize the cost of attending W&L Law was by participating in Army ROTC. I will devote a few articles to this subject in the future, but suffice it to say now that the Army will pay for two years of graduate school for students who participate in the ROTC program and agree to serve in the Army following graduation. I took Army ROTC classes at the nearby Virginia Military Institute, and the Army ROTC cadre nominated me to spend a month at Fort Knox, Kentucky the summer after my first year of law school to compete for an ROTC scholarship. That training was one of the most difficult experiences of my life, and I was eventually offered an Army ROTC scholarship to pay for my last two years of law school. I ended up declining this award since I transferred law schools and receive financial aid from my new law school. However, this program is available to graduate students who want Uncle Sam to pick up the cost of attending graduate school.
I received good grades during my first year of law school, and I was eventually able to transfer to Georgetown University Law Center. I had applied early decision to Georgetown Law when initially applying to law schools and was rejected, so it was particularly satisfying to be admitted there as a transfer student. Unlike W&L Law, Georgetown Law had a generous need-based financial aid program, and I was a “pro” at applying for need-based aid from my experiences in college. I eventually obtained need-based grants from Georgetown Law to cover about 40 percent of my tuition and living expenses. While at Georgetown Law, I also worked a work-study job that paid more than twice the minimum wage. With the money from my work-study job, I was able to cover most of my living expenses and minimize the total amount of money I had to borrow to finance my law school education.
Despite the fact that I received need-based financial aid from Georgetown Law, I still borrowed around $135,000 to finance my entire law school education. Of course, since much of this debt had high interest rates, and the amount of money was so massive, the final sum I owed once I entered the workforce was even higher. Indeed, when you include the interest that accrued on my student loans when I attended law school, the sum I borrowed to earn a law degree is actually closer to $155,000. When you add the money that I borrowed to attend college to this amount, the total amount of debt I faced when entering the workforce in October of 2012 was around $176,000. Because of capitalizing interest, I was eventually forced to pay $197,890.20 to retire all of the debt that I borrowed to pay for my college and law school education.
This is the last of the introductory articles I planned to write, and my next articles will discuss the “nuts and bolts” of how you can pay off student loans early. However, I wanted at the onset to provide some background information about myself, and discuss the categories of people who may and may not benefit from expediting student loan payments. It is also important to acknowledge that people who have not yet attended college and/or law school can still take steps to minimize the amount of money they borrow to finance their education. For everyone else who is seeking ways to expedite student loan payments, this website will take on this topic in earnest over the coming weeks.