Debt.

I sat on the scholarship committee for the local bar association this morning. We had 7 applicants for which we could select whom to award up to $6,000 in grants to. These were all area residents currently in law school. As there are no local law schools, all of the candidates study out of town. There were a number of straight A candidates, but most of them had mostly B's a few C's. What set them apart was in the range of debt that they each had. One guy had about $150,000 in student loan debt. Everyone has more than $19,000. We agreed that we couldn't base the decision on scholarship - even C students can become Presidents and that it was probably easier for A students to get funding and A students are more likely to get higher paying jobs on graduation. So need was considered a better indicator. That said, should an award be given to the person least able to manage their debt or to the person that lived frugally and made conscious decisions and choices to reduce her debt load? We ended up each scoring the candidates and tallying up the scores. I turned out that the person with the six-figure debt scored 4th in the tally and the top two were next two without any corresponding aid. We ended up splitting the $6,000 equally between the top two. The one applicant was the youngest of 11 and him and all his siblings were financially independent since they  turned 14. They all paid for all their schooling expenses from high school on. The other winner was the middle of three and her parents paid for her undergrad and no more. Descpite their diverese backgrounds, they both had about equal student load debt - about $75,000. Interesting.