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Steel
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Comprehensive US Scholarship/Financial Aid Discussion 04 Mar 2008, 15:30
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solaris1
If you expect to payoff your MBA loans within two years or so of graduating, private loans indexed to Prime or LIBOR are likely going to be cheaper than federal student loans anyway.

And I'll reiterate that creditworthy folks (probably most GMATClubbers) will still be able to secure federal Graduate PLUS loans even if the FAFSA does not consider you eligible for Perkins/Stafford loan programs! You can search this forum for the longer term advantages of federal loans over private loans.
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I think Solaris' point is well made. I confirmed this both at Kellogg and at MIT - regardless of your EFC, you can still get optional loans up to the cost of education, its just that the rate is a\higher than the need based rate (in the case of Kellogg I think it was 1/2 a point). On 120k, thats about $30/month.

Granted - you're not getting the fixed Stafford/Perkins rates (a full 2-3 points lower), but those are severely limited anyway.
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Comprehensive US Scholarship/Financial Aid Discussion 12 Mar 2008, 01:30
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Currently negotiating a deadline extension with on eof my accepted schools, and they've come back and given me ~$10k scholarship.. No extension as of yet :o
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chimaki
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Comprehensive US Scholarship/Financial Aid Discussion 12 Mar 2008, 08:12
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my present situation is $20k/year full time at Cornell vs $0 part time at chicago. staying part time at chicago as i live here and if it comes down to it i'll quit and go full-time. looking to go into sales and trading. anyone with any insight? seems as though i'll definitely have less debt going with cornell, but not sure about the earning potential difference after.
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Comprehensive US Scholarship/Financial Aid Discussion 16 Mar 2008, 01:14
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I think this thread can be for both US and international students... :)
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Comprehensive US Scholarship/Financial Aid Discussion 16 Mar 2008, 11:44
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alright, I can merge some of the international stuff over to the new thread...

nevermind, here's the thread:

International Student Financial Aid Discussion
103-t61406
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Comprehensive US Scholarship/Financial Aid Discussion 18 Mar 2008, 09:25
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Some FAFSA/Loan info from the UCLA financial aid office...

I believe the UCLA fin aid officer told me that this is how it works:

Total Yearly Budget - EFC = Need Based Loans (includes both Subsidized and Unsub loans, up to 20,500)

If you need more than $20,500 for need based loans, you supplement the rest with Grad PLUS loan.

Everyone can borrow up to their total budget using the Grad PLUS loan, regardless of need or EFC.

Hope that makes sense... took me a while to figure that out talking to the officer.

For example: If you have a total yearly budget of $80K, and your FAFSA EFC is $60K, that means your Need Based Loans is $20K.

That $20K can come as $8500 from Subsidized and $11500 from Unsubsidized Stafford Loans.

Now you still have $60K of EFC to deal with, which you can pay out of pocket or use the Grad PLUS loan to borrow the entire $60K.

Example 2: The same budget, but your EFC is $40K.

Your need based loans exceed the $20,500 that the stafford loans cover, so you borrow that entire amount. The remaining $19,500 you would borrow with the PLUS loan, as well as the $40K EFC if you choose to do so, for a total of $59,500 with the PLUS Loan.

Hope this makes sense... please let me know if you have questions and if I got something wrong.
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Comprehensive US Scholarship/Financial Aid Discussion 25 Mar 2008, 08:06
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https://online.wsj.com/article/SB1206399 ... whats_news

An article from the Journal this morning about the tightening of student credit. Worth a read.
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Comprehensive US Scholarship/Financial Aid Discussion 25 Mar 2008, 17:38
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Be aware that the student loan default rates for the schools mentioned in that article are likely a lot higher than those at any national MBA program. The lenders are actually going to make an effort to seek out borrowers like newly minted MBA's for their salary potential alone - a brewing student loan crisis is not something 90% of GMATClubbers need to be worried about. At least not at this point.

And also bear in mind that the Prime rate these days is 5.25% - private student loans (if you can afford to pay them off within a couple of years) are currently a relatively better deal than any federal student loan program. Even the LIBOR indexed student loans are in the 5.00 - 5.50% range.

hotdog
https://online.wsj.com/article/SB120639948652760737.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news

An article from the Journal this morning about the tightening of student credit. Worth a read.
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