EFC, grants, and loans?
I recently got married (may 2000). My college told me to wait and file
my FAFSA until after i was married, so i could be considered an
independent student. I did. So today, i get my loan approval from my
college, for a mere $5900 a year. This is almost the exact same amount
i got while considered a dependent student of my parents. Their income
on my FAFSA was almost 90K. However, my spouse and i gross a mere 35K.
So how the heck does PHEAA, and the Federal government come up w/ my
Expected contribution of $8400/yr!!!! I'm no better off being married
in terms of my school loans/grants. I mean, what do they want from me,
i've been working 50hr/week just to keep up w/ interest payments on 3
loans, car, rent, etc... and now they won't even give me enough money
to pay for a year's tuition, even after i'm married.....
Are there any other sources i can look at.. I've checked fastweb and
finaid, and there doesn't seem to be much for me.
I wrote the PA grant division a letter telling them that my current
employer moved me off of full time work, to part time only, so maybe i
can get more than $300 in grants now........
Basically, i'm 25K in debt to loans for college, and have 2 years to
go , + grad school before i can even take my profesional boards.
(Speech Language Pathology), and my wife is 30K down as well..
I just don't know if we can keep this up, me working 50hrs a week, and
her about the same, just to make ends meet... After all, what grad
school will want a 3.0 student w/out any outside activities but a full
time job as a mental health care provider.
My SAR says i'm married.. so i assume that means i'm an independent
student now.......
Sorry about the long rant.. just something i had to do........
My first inclination, when I read this, was to say, Be thankful for
small favors. The less student loan debt, the better. Of course,
that's less easy to say when student loans are the only thing that will
get you through college.
My second inclination was to wonder whether you really need student
loans, in view of the fact that your parents make $90K, you and your
spouse gross $35K, etc. But I guess that's why the FAFSA and other
documents are confidential. It's really not our business to inquire
whether you or your parents have other debts, respectable or otherwise.
Maybe my best reaction is to think that we should have a government
that is less inclined to delve into people's personal affairs. I
wonder what it would be like if the student loan system -- as distinct
from sources of grants and other free money -- were simply willing to
make loans up to the amount of one's tuition and/or one's basic expense
of attending college. If it costs $X, and the government makes a
direct loan payment to the student's account at that school in the
amount of $X, do we really need to chisel you for some estimated amount
that you may (or may not) be able to get from your wife or your folks?
And do we need to employ a small army of people, in government and at
colleges, to create, interpret, and track FAFSA forms for millions of
applicants?
Those questions may imply a student loan program that would be even
larger than the one we have today. If so, costs to the government to
run the thing, and to pay for defaults, would be larger than costs
today. Could loan insurance and appropriate adjustments of interest
rates pay for it? Or would this greater flexibility on behalf of
middle-class students come at the expense of lower-income students?
It still seems that the best solution would be to cut the government
out of the loop -- to require colleges and students to make their
financial arrangements directly with one another. The approach I like
involves a pledge, by the student, to pay a certain portion of his/her
lifetime earnings (e.g., 2%) to the college. Government could still
get into the act by making loans to colleges, to departments within
colleges, etc.
See, your case is going to require a couple of hours or more of your
time, and more hours from people in the government, at the bank, at
your school, etc. ... you figure that this happens for thousands of
people, and it really adds up. A huge amount of time and energy goes
into this stuff, and it still seems that the FAFSA and the process are
not always on target. Hence the question I posed above, about whether
we would really be that much further behind if we tried to simplify the
process.
Just be sure to track the job market in your proposed field of study as
you go along. You're looking at a LOT of debt before you're done. The
present educational finance system discourages you from taking out that
debt unless you can be sure the education will pay off in terms of a
job. How you can be sure that the job will still be there five years
after graduation, when your student loan bills are still going strong,
I have no idea.
Yeah, that's the thing. People who talk about nothing but the
importance of repaying your student loans, or else of finding some
alternate way of paying for college, do not realize that they are thus
favoring the wealthy, whose kids won't have to work during college and
who, brain cell for brain cell, will thus tend to have more time to
study and to earn the best grades.