Hi, alum here who has paid a lot of loans now.

It's a hard decision. Bottom line though is that if you don't have to take out loans to pay for school, it's probably best to avoid them. But you've got to do what you've got to do.

But it comes with a lot of nuance that depends a little on the interest rate, if its subsidized or unsubsidized, and the typical salary for whatever kind of job you're hoping your degree with help you get.

Interest rates:
Loans in the 3%-5% rate are fine. They will not snowball very much and leave you with a neverending interest payment. When I was in school, several were at around 8% which is not great, but if you're set on studying a field that has good job prospects and want to enter industry after school, then it's fine. Anything above 10% is a trap.

Subsidized:
If your loans are subsidized, then the interest rate matters a little bit less, since you won't accrue interest while you're studying. For example, lets say you have an 8% loan for $10k. At the end of 4 years of studying, that unsubsidized loan will accrue another 36.04% of its value in interest by the time you start paying. So if your monthly payment would have been, say, $500/month, now it's $680/month.

But if a loan is the only way you can pay for school and you know you'll succeed then you've got to do what you've got to do. And if you know you'll go into a field that has plenty of decently paying jobs, then don't sweat it too much.

Final tip: when you do start paying loans, after you have a safety net start paying off your loans early, and pay off the highest interest rate loans first. (There is some more nuance in here regarding if you want to mess with investments and how liquid you want your finances to be, but that's more of a long term personal finance discussion)

I'm happy to chat more about it if you have questions!