FAFSA Strategies

Hi,

1. Federal grants are only applicable to undergrad students (such as pell seog), unfortunately grad students will only qualify for unsubsidized loans (6.8% fixed interest rate) and, if you can pass the credit check, PLUS loan(7.9% fixed interest rate).
2. None of the grad loans are need based so there is no need to transfer your money around. Sub loans were eliminated for grad students in 2012. The only possible factor may be in institutional scholarships, but that would vary by school.

Within the last three weeks or so, I spoke to financial aid officers at both Sloan and Haas and both echoed what maplesyrups mentioned above.

I have a burning question! I'm trying to figure out if I can get funds to pay for things like flights and different treks and other expenses, but after speaking with a FInancial Aid advisor at Maryland she said that the funds would only cover room board + tuition+books. I would like to know if that's true???

You can borrow up to your school's calculated Cost of Attendance (COA), which can be found on the Financial Aid website. Of course if you end up finding rent that's cheaper than the average calculated COA, you can use the funds to pay for whatever else you need for living expenses.

In all likelihood though this is doubtful. Most schools estimated budgets are low already before you even add travel expenses in. Talking to friends in school and running the numbers myself for realistic expenses most schools underestimate by at least 10% how much it will really cost to attend school. This means you will not be able to borrow enough money to fund additional items like travel.

The exception to this is school related travel. Some schools offer international trips are part of a class. You spend a month or a few weeks in a foreign country doing work for an actual course. In this case you can ask the school to account for this course required travel in your budget and they will raise it a few thousand. However I don't think you can do that, drop the class and then spend the loan on personal travel. So this is an unusual exception.

Hi All,

I am not seeing anything addressing a particular problem I am having with the student loan process so I am hoping someone on this thread may have some knowledge. My tuition and mandatory fees are going to be covered by my parents but I will need to take out loans the cover the rest. Most of the student loans I am seeing disburse to the school you are attending and then the office of financial aid hands over the amount of money that remains after tuition fees etc have been deducted. Having spoken with a Columbia Business School Financial Aid Officer briefly they indicated that they are obligated to subtract the tuition first and then disburse the loans even if the tuition has already been paid.

For tax reasons my parents have to pay the school tuition directly or else the money given to me or paid off on my loan is subject to a gift tax on them or income tax for me. Has anyone else had this type of situation and if so what was the solution? Were you able to get a private lender to disburse a student loan directly to you or work something out with the financial aid office at your school?

Thanks!

That's an interesting predicament. I'm sure you can work it out with the school such that they can cash your parents check before applying the loan - just reach out to them and see what they say.

Question about EFC. I understand that subsidized loans are no longer available for grad students. However, can schools put together favorable financial packages based off of the EFC amount disclosed on the FASFA report? In other words, would it still be worth it to try to reduce EFC (through Roth contributions, other ways) in the hope that schools will offer favorable financial aid?

This thread has been extremely helpful. Thank you.

Quick FAFSA question: Do I need to fill one out before getting my application decision, and send it to the schools that I have applied to? Or do I wait until I get in and then send in any financial aid documents?

I keep thinking this process must be similar to undergrad applications, but from this thread it looks like it's really different... no need based aid?!

Thank you!!