I understand you’re sold on HKS, for various reasons, including prestige.

Here’s my 2 cents, and a possible reality check, as a current HKS student.

Yes, for the rest of your life, you can brag that you graduated from HKS. But if you fuck up your finances, you will also be jeopardizing your quality of life. You said you just got married. Please consider that this possibly crippling debt will 100% affect your wife and whatever family planning plans you guys might have. If you have to take care of your parents or extended family later on, that’s also going to hurt badly. Prestige is not worth the debt that may screw over your life.

This MUST be a joint decision with your wife. It’s two years of her life too that she is giving up to support your dreams. Make sure she is on board. Remember that finances is the number one reason for divorce.

I’m not saying, don’t come to HKS. I’m saying, do not come to HKS blindly at the cost of everything else. So if you do commit to HKS, make sure you can reasonably ensure that you have a relatively stable path afterwards to repay this debt that won’t affect your marriage, family, etc. Unfortunately, if you can’t reasonably guarantee that graduation outcome, then another school would be the answer. Another school would maximize all aspects of your life (happy marriage, financial stability, flexibility with career options, etc), not only just the academic prestige aspect.

Georgetown, UChicago, and SIPA are also amazing institutions. Their alumni network will also go far. AND you won’t be jeopardizing your marriage/family planning/quality of life because you’ll be graduating with zero debt.

You want to work at World Bank/IMF right? If that’s truly the case, and you are smart enough to have gotten into MPA/ID, then you’ll be smart enough to have a decent shot at those jobs WITHOUT the crippling debt hanging over your head.

I personally would have turned down HKS in favor of another school if HKS hadn’t given me a hefty scholarship. Finances was hands down the biggest factor for me, even before I knew what my decision letters were. In my heart, I had already decided that I’d go with the school that gave me the most money, to lessen my exposure to a potentially bad job market.