Loans, Work Study, and Living Expenses

juillet
Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:20:38 +0000

It is more normal in some fields than others. The MSW rarely offers a substantial amount of funding, though, as it is a professional degree. You’d have to win a scholarship, and the scholarship is not likely to cover the full costs of the degree.

For the summer semester they usually give you half a year’s worth of the loan, if that’s the only semester you are attending, or one-third the year’s worth of the loan if that is combined with a fall and winter semester. But it depends on the school. I don’t understand why anyone would want to convert work-study (which is nonrepayable aid) to a loan that accrues interest and that you have to pay back, other than laziness which you acknowledged. I really suggest that you get in gear and step up your looking for jobs.

It’s graduate school. You don’t need to live on campus like in undergrad to be tapped into the community. If you can save a substantial amount of money by living off-campus at home – especially for only two years – then you definitely should. Master’s degrees are not cheap and don’t provide a lot of funding; if I lived at home instead of in an apartment (if I were going to graduate school in my home city, that is) I would be saving $11,000 a year solely in rent. That’s not including the amount I would’ve saved on utilities, on buying furniture, and on my security deposit. All together that comes out to $15,000+.

They do have emergency loans, but they are only for emergencies, obviously. For example, due to the bureaucratic nightmare at my university I didn’t get my first paycheck until a 5 weeks after I was supposed to have received it – two and a half months into the academic year. I was able to get an emergency loan from the bursar for $500, which I paid back when I got my money. I bought my computer out of my student loans, which I will have to pay back when I graduate, but my old computer was going the way of the dinosaur.