How much student loan debt will you take on for B-School?

$0 for me, now that I'm longer going to the US, the tuition fees are much lower than at the schools I was rejected from in the US (approx 50% less). Plus with the scholarship, and course length being shorter, it means i can complete the course completly on savings.

Furthermore, the wife can work in Hong Kong when the newborn is old enough because, International School teachers are in demand particularly for private tuition, and we can afford a maid to help with childcare when the wife goes to work (maid cost ~$450 USD per month)

If I had gone to the USA, i would have had to take approx $50k in loans as an estimate.

Toga that makes a lot of sense.. Was your decision also influenced by the subprime problem crippling the US financial sector... R u joining HKUST.

pretty much $0, but I plan on taking out the full Stafford Loan amount to keep son cash on hand after I graduate in case I want to buy into the housing market again, instead of using up my entire equity earned by selling the house.

I will say 80-100k just because I will pay for tuition with loans and wont be touching too much savings. My wife will be working and she should cover most our living expenses. Things like trips will come out of pocket and those definitely will add up, I mean Kwest is going to cost us about 4k because its two of us going.

I got some money from Kellogg but I am searching for private scholarships from my desired industry. Unfortunately those arent available to apply to for another few months, I have talked to a couple HR people and was told almost all scholarships for advanced degrees in my field go to masters of engineering students but I was told if they were to give one out to an MBA student it would be to someone in a top program...I was basically told that people never even try to apply for scholarships for MBAs from them so its work a shot but they werent sure how it would work out. I wont hold my breath but it would be nice. Some of them are pretty much fellowships where they pay you pretty good stipends too.

I was told that some people who intern in the city and are going to the company post grad also occasionally continue working for the company during the year for a day a week which would help give a little spending money. I guess if you arent recruiting you will have a lot more free time.

The decision was made for me. I would have preferred Kellogg, however i withdrew from Cornell after HKUST made me an offer.
The other main factor is that I intend on working in Asia after the MBA.
Cost was not a major contributing factor to the decision, because it is an investment.

i think i will take the max loan amount they provide, which should be around $150K. I do not have enough savings to pay any significant portion of the tuition...the little i have will end being used in travel and other activities.

also, if i am going the IM route, I want to have a decent amount of cash to play in the market...

$0

but it still hurts

19/28, or 67.8% of the people who have responded thus far will be taking on over $80,000 in student loan debt.

Sounds about right. Count yourself very lucky if you're not one of them

Do most students use their savings for business school or is it mostly loans?

I am far from applying to think about this, but was wondering will having a savings account with a large lump of money hurt me when applying for financial aids? I do not mind taking out the loans since student loans have low rates.

I thought more people would be like ujjib.

Thank you,

i wouldnt worry about having too much in savings. at top schools generally you arent going to get scholarships based on need anyway. you may have less subsidized loans, but you are really talking about a few percentage points in interest rate.

Sounds great!
I do not mind the unsubsidized loans, but subsidized loans are really nice and helped me a lot in undergrad.

I was mainly wondering if anyone with a good amount of savings were having to dip into their own savings due to the rejection of aid in the forms of loans from the business schools that they are attending.

I will be in that category despite only doing a one-year program.

Yale SOM Estimated Student Budget for 2 Yrs: $146K
LESS: Scholarship for 2 Yrs: $70K
Estimated Cost of Education for 2 Yrs minus Scholarship: $76K
LESS: Estimated Balance on My Savings Account in August 2009: $85K

RESULT: I won't have a penny in debt after 2 years but I will be dirt poor....

I should be borrowing 20-40K ,if my wife doesn't find work. If she does, I should be able to avoid borrowing.

I am not planning to keep my savings; I will slowly (or not so slowly) deplete them to pay for expenses. I think that loans are pretty expensive right now (GradPlus is a ripe off).

wow, how a year changes things! I'll be graduating with about $80K of debt, since my condo's value dropped to the point where I broke even and didn't really get much money to pay for my b-school.

Thankfully, I'm in the under $20k category. My full scholarship plus stipend covers the overwhelming majority of it. I'm still carrying some loans from undergrad, though, so the total should be around $40k or so.

I'm in the $90 - $100k range, depending on how much the market recovers. Writing that down really makes it clear just how expensive a proposition this is, but still worth it in my view.