<p>@mcat2 The interest rates charged to graduate students are usurious IMHO. We were able to lend him the money he needed to bridge the gap between money he could contribute and the COA by drawing on a HELOC. (Luckily, our house is still worth significantly more than we paid for it. Housing prices around here didn’t take the huge dive they did in some places, probably because they were never as inflated.) The different in interest rate was about 5 percentage points, IIRC.</p>