1210	Assessment
Research Question	The research question sounds reasonable as stated, but what is actually at stake is hard to see.  Given the enormous variation in social backgrounds, college quality, disciplinary choice, occupational choice, college costs, ambition, college performance, and other relevant conditions, teasing out the implications of college loans will require good data and a fairly sophisticated research design.  It also would be good to have a better specified research question that recognizes this complexity.
Relevant Literature	The three listed articles are obviously relevant, but the plan to expand beyond this is vague.
Causal Interpretations	The causal statements do not say much.  If all else is equal, it would seem fairly obvious that having significant debt is a burden compared to not having debt.  The causal possibilities presumably concern the alternative implications debt might have, particularly in interaction with other conditions.  Debt may limit what people can do, it may spur them to greater effort, it may be of little significance to people who get high paying jobs, it may weigh heavily on those whose careers pay poorly.
Data	The data mentioned do not sound any better than they did several weeks ago, and this proposal offers no explanation why this data is appropriate.  The data are on student aid are three decades old, and the idea of using aggregated data does not seem to fit the research agenda.    Additionally, you want to consider whether you can get data that allow you to address selection effects.  People who choose to take on a lot of debt to get a college degree are probably different from those who don’t.  Also, people who select different majors and pursue different careers tend to be different from each other.  Thus, it is reasonable to assume that important personal characteristics and social conditions distinguish both who acquires college debt and people's choice of college major and later careers.  This raises the question of how your data can allow you to separate the influence of college debt on career patterns from the influence of other circumstances on both debt and careers (the possible confounders of selection effects, in variables jargon).
Research Value	The explanation of the research's value is still weak
Timetable	Okay.
Priorities for Developing a Full Draft	This project needs to find appropriate data (or provide a defense for the data proposed), to specify clearer research goals, and to show that the data can support the intended research.
Miscellaneous Notes