Please note that this transcript was auto-generated. We apologize for any minor errors in spelling or grammar.

[00:00:00] Welcome to the MEFA Pathway Learning Series. My name is Apelila Joseph, and I am the MEFA Pathway Program Manager. MEFA is a state authority created in 1982 to help families plan, save, and pay for college, and prepare for post-secondary success. As an extension of all the great resources MEFA provides.

FIFA Pathway is a no cost comprehensive college and career planning web portal for students in grade six through 12. Our goal is to help you become familiar with the tools and features NEFA Pathway has to offer in support of post-secondary readiness and success. Let’s get started. Today we are going.

So to get started, I am on [00:01:00] MEFA pathway.org and I’m going to log into my student account. So you’re gonna click on, I am a student. So for first time users, and I’ll just show you quickly, if you’ve never, uh, logged into Miha Pathway, you can register as a new user. So you would click register here. You would enter in your first name, last name, your date of birth.

The city or town where your school is located, and then you would select your school from the list. Uh, after that you would click submit. On the following page, you’ll be able to create your username, a password, fill in your email address. Uh, so it is following the typical steps to create an account. So I’m gonna go ahead and log into my test account.

So once students log into MEFA pathway, by default, they’re brought to their [00:02:00] dashboard. Uh, so on their dashboard they can see some things, um, like their last date of activity. Uh, sort of their activity tracker. Uh, and then on the dashboard we also have a nice self-paced guide, um, which is helpful to move students throughout their, their MEFA pathway experience.

So for today, we are going to look at MEFA Pathways Loan Cost Estimator. Uh, so to get there I’m gonna navigate to the Pay for College tab. There are lots of great activities under the Pay for College tab, but for today, I’m gonna click on the loan cost estimator. So the loan cost estimator is really a helpful tool, uh, for students.

I like to think of it, uh, particularly for seniors, um, after they’ve gotten in their financial aid offers, they’re comparing their offers using. College cost calculator. Uh, but as a next great step, uh, [00:03:00] students can use the loan cost estimator. Oftentimes when students are looking at their financial aid offers, they might have a gap.

Maybe they’re planning on taking out a student loan. And so using the loan cost estimator is a great way for students to understand, you know, how much they’re planning on to take out for college. Remember, in college is not just your first year, but it is four years if you’re pursuing your bachelor’s degree.

And then also students should take into account whether or not they’re going to pursue a master’s or a doctorate degree. And so you wanna take into account really all of that student loan debt, so that way you have a great understanding of what your typical monthly payment might be. Uh, and so using the loan cost estimator is a great way to illustrate that.

So for the sake of today, uh, we are going to just put in some numbers. For the exercise, but I would strongly encourage students if they’ve completed the college class [00:04:00] calculator to enter in whatever their gap is, times four. Um, that’s a helpful way to look at how much they might need to borrow to fill that gap times four years of school.

But for today, uh, let’s say our student, uh, is going to take out $70,000. Student loans, and this $70,000 is over there four years for their undergraduate degree, they’re gonna have a typical 5% interest rate, and let’s say they’re planning on taking 10 years to repay that loan. The loan cost estimator is going to calculate the student’s average estimated monthly loan payment.

So in this case, if I take out $70,000, my average estimated monthly loan payment is gonna be seven $42 and 46 cents. They’ll [00:05:00] also go on to show after 10 years. So if I take the typical 10 years to repay my loan, uh, principal plus interest, I’ll be paying in total $89,095 and three.

Of this amount, so of the total amount that I’m paying my principal plus my interest, the calculator is showing me that I’ll pay about $19,000 in interest. So this is helpful for students to really understand the true cost of taking out a loan, but also be financially prepared to take on that burden upon graduation from school.

The loan cost estimator also has a really great additional feature where students can really do some of that feature forecasting and thinking about what career they’re gonna actually, uh, be going into. So it, it moves my estimated monthly student loan payment down. So you can [00:06:00] see that seven $42 and 46 cents a month, I can select the career that I am thinking of going into.

So in this instance, let’s say I want to be a teacher, and so maybe I wanna be an art drama and mu or music teacher. And so what it will do is it will show my projected annual salary, and then I can click, click on calculate affordability. And so what that will do is this loan cost estimator will take my estimated monthly student loan payment and my projected annual salary and let me know what my estimated level of financial obligation would be.

So in this instance, if I am making $76,000 in my career, I would have a low [00:07:00] level of financial obligation, meaning my salary would be. High enough where paying my loan every month would not sort of break the bank. And so this is a really great activity for students to do. Um, if they have more than one career in mind.

Maybe, you know, you were like me when you were in high school. I sort of told, you know, depending on who asked me, I told every teacher a different career I was interested in. So this is great for students to be able to sort of look at that projected loan payment. Varying careers. Students also have the option, um, to pick from their list of their careers.

So students have saved careers through my careers list and meet the pathway. They can select one of those careers, uh, from their list. And so it’ll fill in, um, and see. You can see my projected salary as a travel agent. Drastically. And [00:08:00] so I’m just gonna click calculate affordability once more so it can recalculate it.

Uh, so now you can see if I were to have that estimated, uh, student loan payment of $742 with a projected annual salary of just $38,000, that would be a high financial obligation. So that would be financially challenging, uh, for me to do, uh, on that salary. So this is a great activity for students to do.

They can do this, uh, loan cost estimator multiple times with various careers, but it’s helpful for students to really be able to see that illustration of what their financial obligation would be like upon graduation from college. Uh, so it’s another way to sort of illustrate, uh, the gravity of a student loan payment, um, in a way that, um, makes it more real for students.

Uh, so again, I would strongly recommend [00:09:00] that as students, um, utilize the MEFA Pathways college cost calculator, um, that they are able to, um, then move on to use the loan cost estimator to really look at, um, those college costs and what they might have to take out in a student loan and greater context. Uh, so again, um, within the loan cost estimator, students can just select my college cost gap totals, um, if they’ve used our college cost calculator.

Um, you can just see. So for Smith College, I, and this, again, this is just my test account, so I’ve put in different numbers for the college cost calculator. Um, I’m gonna select Smith College and that gap of $43,000. Um, again, keeping that 5% interest rate, I’m gonna repay it over 10 years. Um, my estimated loan payment is $460.[00:10:00]

Um, and then I can, let’s say I wanna keep the travel agent, um, I can recalculate the affordability and then you can see. Um, that’s an average. So it could be financially manageable with some additional planning. Uh, so this is a great tool that really leans on our existing activities within MEFA Pathway and it makes it nice and seamless for students to go on and use.

Um, it being the next step after the college cost calculator and also being able to select careers from their, my careers list and the platform. Uh, so that is a, a nice quick overview of NIFA Pathways College cost calculator. Uh, be sure to stay tuned, um, for additional, uh, videos and content. Thank you for attending.

Please contact us if you have any questions or need any additional resources. We encourage you to follow us on Instagram and our other social channels so [00:11:00] you don’t miss a single update.