Loans, Work Study, and Living Expenses

ticklemepink
Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:29:19 +0000

I wouldn’t recommend working during grad school. At least no more than you need to.

I was awarded work study as well and I applied for every job I could find that would work in my schedule. It’s maddening but gotta do it. Work study is designed to cover your expenses like books, food, etc not covered by the big tuition bill.

You’re contradicting yourself in this post. On one hand, you want to cover your work study into a loan of what? $3000? So you don’t have to work or job searching just seemed to hard. On the other hand, you’re looking to reduce your debt. How would converting a work study award into a loan reduce your debt?

I know of a MSW/PhD student who lives about 30 minutes away from campus in order to save even more money. Her rent is basically half of where we live for sharing a house. It’s ridiculous. As a grad student, I praise her for going to money-saving route and knowing that as a grad student, she doesn’t really need to be on campus. She calculated that even with gas, it was way cheaper to live at home. The only reason to live on-campus or literally next to it is if you have friends who are in the area.

Whatever you earn during your work study won’t affect your ability to get a similar package for the following year since you’ll be making practically minimum wage anyway.