by our College Data Analytics TeamHere you will find what students actually borrow to attend Skidmore College: median debt, the percentile spread, total borrowing including PLUS loans, and the cost to repay. The data below is drawn directly from federal sources.
Looking at the entering class at Skidmore, 34% of new students use loans toward freshman-year expenses, with a typical loan of $6,957 each, across private and federal loan sources.
Federal loans alone average $4,951, or about 90.0% of the typical first-year dependent student borrowing cap of $5,500. Remember the all-undergraduate figures below leave out private loans, so they will look lower than this private-plus-federal freshman amount.
Across the full undergraduate body at Skidmore (freshmen included), 33% use federal student loans to help pay for their education, with a mean of $6,043 per year. That amounts to 22.1% more than the freshman federal average of $4,951.
Borrowing at that rate every year works out to about $12,086 by year two and around $24,172 across a four-year program. These projections assume the same federal borrowing each year and exclude private and Parent PLUS loans.
| Undergraduate federal borrowing | Value |
|---|---|
| Share using federal loans | 33% |
| Average federal loan per year | $6,043 |
| Undergraduates with a federal loan | 917 |
| Total federal loans (one year) | $5,541,377 |
Graduating and withdrawing students at Skidmore carry a median federal debt of $15,000 of cumulative federal debt.
| Borrower group | Median federal debt |
|---|---|
| All federal borrowers | $15,000 |
| Students who completed (graduates) | $19,500 |
| Students who withdrew | $6,500 |
Withdrawn-student debt matters because those borrowers carry the loans without the degree that helps repay them.
Looking only at the median is misleading — these four percentiles describe the full debt distribution for borrowers at Skidmore.
| Percentile | Cumulative Federal Debt |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile (lowest-debt students) | $5,500 |
| 25th percentile | $9,225 |
| 75th percentile | $27,000 |
| 90th percentile (highest-debt students) | $27,000 |
How wide this percentile range is tells you how much borrowing varies across students at Skidmore.
The figures above count only the students own federal loans. Adding PLUS loans (borrowed by parents or graduate students) gives a fuller picture of total borrowing at Skidmore.
| Group | Borrowers | Median debt incl. PLUS |
|---|---|---|
| All borrowers | 87 | $50,000 |
| Completed (graduates) | 59 | $60,000 |
| Did not complete | 28 | $38,023 |
Completers face an estimated standard 10-year monthly payment on their PLUS-inclusive debt of roughly $713.46/mo.
Repayment burden translates the debt figures into what a borrower actually pays each month. Skidmore.
Defaulting means failing to repay a federal student loan, which carries serious credit consequences. The federal two-year cohort default rate for Skidmore follows.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| 2-year cohort default rate | 2.4% |
| Borrowers in the cohort | 324 |
A lower default rate generally signals that graduates earn enough to manage their loan payments.
Median debt differs by income tier, first-generation status, and whether the student is financially dependent.
Median Debt by Income Bracket
| Income tier | Median federal debt |
|---|---|
| Low income | $9,500 |
| Middle income | $19,000 |
| High income | $16,444 |
First-Generation Comparison
| Cohort | Median federal debt |
|---|---|
| First-generation students | $13,000 |
| Continuing-generation students | $15,875 |
Federal data publishes the following gap measures for Skidmore.
The Difference Between Subsidized and Unsubsidized Loans
Unsubsidized federal student loans accrue interest every month — even while you are still enrolled. Unless you pay that interest as it builds, the balance you owe at graduation can be noticeably higher than the amount you originally borrowed.
Worth Knowing
Declaring bankruptcy does not erase federal student loan debt. If you stop paying, the federal government can garnish a portion of your wages until the loans are repaid.
References
More about our data sources and methodologies.