You have to plan to meet your positive goals and you ALSO have to plan to avoid disaster.
So, let's say it all goes wrong. For example, you buy an (on paper) acceptable deal but there are some hidden repair costs that come in. The HVAC dies an untimely death and you also get another 5% repair cost. It can happen. It's happened to me. :(
And covid kicks back in with a vengeance. You have delays getting the repairs done but that mortgage payment is still a requirement. Then you get a tenant in who loses their job to the covid economic fallout and your government won't let you evict people for the next 6-9 months. The tenant gets depressed and trashes the place, so it will cost another $10,000 to repair it when you get them out.
And that mortgage payment keeps on being due. Do you live in a really cold area, the kind where the pipes can freeze in winter? You find yourself paying for heating so you don't have a catastrophic plumbing failure.
Can you handle that on top of your student loans and other financial obligations?
Can you handle it if your income drops 20% from covid? But your hours aren't cut so you can cut expenses on repairing the property after you get the tenant out?
Can you handle it if you can just walk away from the deal and cut your losses? And real estate prices plummet in your area so you'll lose 20% off the purchase price plus 6% in realtor commissions...
If you can, go right ahead.
If not, maybe cutting your overhead by paying down those loans is a better choice.
I have zero idea of the cost of rental property and expected rents in your area.
When we started in 2014, my first 3 properties were in the $30-40K price range, with $7-13K in repair costs (plus a lot of sweat equity). If the first property had failed and we had to sell, we would still have broken even just because of the difference between our rent-ready cost vs the sale price (even with a 25% price drop after purchasing). Plus, with no mortgage, our carrying costs for the year would be less than $2,500. We had no debt at the time, plenty of savings and a high savings rate.
Other folks have scraped together every penny they had to get their first property leaving them very exposed to ANYTHING going wrong. Can't imagine the stress they were under!