You need to think about if it's worth investing in yourself. You can't base your whole career on the amount of debt you will be in. The nice thing about PT is that we start out low but you have a lot of opportunity to make more (ie. work weekends). As a new grad you will start with 60-70k however you can go on income based repayment, in which the other person wrote you can make payments at 600 min. a month.
If you think about it, you will be in debt with a higher education. What do you want to be doing when you're in debt? Doing something you hate? I mean, I have 110k of debt but I don't regret this decision. If you have a passion for it, this is the path you have to take. And then you deal with the loans. Once you get out of school, you work as hard as you can to pay them off. It's doable...just takes longer.
Good luck!! Hope this answer helped
This.
If you are younger and okay with being frugal for a few years it is entirely possible to pay this off. The key is you HAVE to be frugal or you'll never escape it. I have two friends that have been PT's for the past 5 years. One went to a public university, the other a private university for their DPT. Public school grad took out some unnecessary loans and left with roughly 55k of debt. The private school grad ~120k. But how they have lived post graduation has dictated their debt and interest. Both worked at the same outpatient clinic making roughly 67-72k as new grads.
Public school grad decided to explore and enjoy her salary. Nothing out of the ordinary, but typical life purchases one would make as a newly salaried person. She bought a reasonable new car, went on a couple vacations, and rents an apartment appropriate for her salary. Paying the minimum on loans. 5 years later, shes only made a small dent in her loans and working to build a down payment on a house she wants to buy. Because of car notes, insurance, student loans, savings, and just general life expenses...her debt will take a few more years to pay off and interest is continuing to accrue.
Private school grad took a different approach. He lived with his brother in a cheaper area of town and split rent. He kept his older honda with 150k miles. His beater car was the butt of the jokes at my clinic but he took it in stride. He spent two weekends a month working PRN at a SNF and picked up holiday shifts when possible. When he was paid he put almost the entirety of his paychecks into a savings account and the rest exclusively towards his loans. In that five years he was able to knock down ~120k to now being close to debt free. The old honda hit 320k on the odometer and is finally putting it out to pasture and buying a pretty nice car.
Moral of my anecdotal story? You can pay it off. But you HAVE to be smart about it. I would also say, consider your age and personal relationships. Private school grad was in his mid 20s when he started working and single. Working weekends and living extremely frugal was a possibility for him. If you are older, you have less time to be in the work force and things like starting a family, buying a house, investing in retirement, planning/paying for a wedding, vacations, etc... is much harder when you are stuck paying $600-1200/month on top of everything else. Obviously a spouse with a great job helps but it isn't everything.
Sorry for the long post!
