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How on earth do you afford to go to University?


It depends entirely on the student. As Bitt pointed out, most students go to substantially cheaper shools. For those who go to the pricey schools, however, very few actually pay the list price. Such schools, particularly those with large endowments, tend to pay out a variety of different scholarships, both "merit-based" and "need-based". The people who aren't elgible for any of that usually get by with some combination of part-time work and massive debt accumulation. The loans often come from the university and (I believe) are below market rates. At one point, I believe Princeton had made enough of a killing in the stock market that they unilaterally decided to forgive loans for many of their students (although I can't seem to find any mention of this on Google, but I seem recall it happening). Likewise, I'm aware of similar programs for law students. A NYU law student friend of mine was able to go into public interest work, being paid far less than somebody makes at a law firm, and an anonymous NYU donor made her loan payments while she was doing the public interest work.