Something I don't see come up very often here is the cost of attending MIT. I don't want to dissuade people from attending just because of the cost, but I want to people to be realistic about what that cost looks like after graduating.

When I graduated, I owed just shy of $130,000 (of which about $123k was principal). And even this is less than it could have otherwise been, since I did 2 years at a state school and then transferred to MIT for 3 years.

I left my first job with a startup to go to another place for a 20% pay increase because of my loans. Is that the worst thing? Of course not. But I hope this helps someone considering MIT levels of debt understand what that level of debt implies. The spreadsheet linked below shows my payment history over time, and how much money went to interest alone, especially during the first year or two.

ETA: I neglected to note that I did have an external scholarship that covered a little under $20k a year.

spreadsheet with all the details