deciding on student loans

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m planning on going back to school in the fall. Recently, I found out that I actually have been accepted into the program that I applied for, which is good news because now I qualify for federal loans.  Before I was just planning on taking classes on a per-unit basis, which means less classes, and I would have to pay for them myself.  And, unfortunately, I just don’t have that much money.  I’m not opposed at all to taking out student loans, but I’m just not sure how much I should take out.  Tuition for the year is $7200. My living costs every month will be about $1300, not including any sort of food, entertainment, savings, or debt pay-off. Including all of those things, I’m looking at around $2000 – 2200 every month.  I’ll still be working at the restaurant part-time (probably around 4 shifts a week) so I should be able to pay all of my living expenses from that, but I will probably have to take out the full cost of tuition in student loans. It seems like a LOT of money.  However, I don’t want to make the mistake of not taking out enough, and as a consequence having to work so much that my schoolwork will suffer.  The whole point of this program is to prepare me for graduate school, and to make such a strong candidate that I will receive funding for my PhD.  Because if I don’t receive funding, I’m not going. So I need to do really well now, which will mean cutting back on my work hours and leaving PLENTY of time for studying.

I guess what I’m trying to figure out is, how much is too much in student loans?  I’ve been reading PF blog archives now about this subject, and there are a lot of different opinions on student loans.  I myself am on the fence – I don’t see it as good debt, but for some people (including myself) it’s necessary to get where they want to go.  My parents didn’t save any money for me to attend college, and I was too young to really understand that there might have been other paths besides just taking out student loans. And I’m truly grateful for the education and the experience that I received (even though I made a LOT of mistakes), so I’m ok with the loans I had to take out to have it. I think for me they were the right choice, then.  And I think they’re still the right choice for me now, but I am still so hesitant to put myself even further into debt.  However, even with going back to school, I am still right on track to pay off my credit cards in twelve months – I’ve cut a lot of things from my budget to make sure that I can go back, but I haven’t cut any of the amount allotted for debt pay-off. Anyways, I don’t want to get sidetracked (even though I already am) – I’ve reconciled myself to the fact that I will have to take out student loans this year, but I’m still interested in finding out other people’s opinions on the matter.

Here are some interesting posts I’ve found so far:

• This one at Stacking Pennies on why she thinks Federal Student Aid is a good thing
• Her at Make Love, Not Debt, on student debt loads in general, and hers personally (should there be an apostrophe in hers? for some reason I’m just not sure)
• PiggyBankBlues on juggling student loans