<p>I'm a 27 year old who is looking to apply for a graduate program for fall 2015. I'm currently an officer in the military and I get out in about a year, I then plan on working for a year in the civilian world prior to going back to school. Some of the schools I'm looking at are Stanford, Harvard, Upenn, Berkeley, and UT Austin. I'll be using the GI Bill / Yellow Ribbon to pay for all or the majority of the tuition costs over two years, whatever else isn't picked up by financial aid I will probably finance with loans.</p>
<p>My parents have fallen on somewhat hard times recently, my dad having been laid off from his job and my mom providing the only source of income for the family. I have been fortunate in investing various extra pays from working in combat zones and currently have a lot of money in stock, so I was planning on giving them a hand this Christmas to help them and my younger brother move into a new house and purchase badly needed new vehicles.</p>
<p>My only concern is that during the financial aid process, a lot of schools want to look at your W'2s, and mine will have $5,000+ in dividends from my investments. If I were to gift my stock to my parents, the financial aid people may be suspicious at my lack of assets given the very high dividends I made the previous year from high assets, and think that I moved the money to a Swiss account or something to try to game the financial aid process.</p>
<p>Is this a valid concern and if so how do I show that I made a needed gift to my parents? Kind of a weird situation but I thought I'd float it to figure out how I want to approach this. I figure I should apply for financial aid even if I only get loans out of it, but the last thing I want to do is generate suspicion that could hinder the application process. For reference, the schools I am applying to seem to all be CSS/Profile or Consensus.</p>
<p>This is likely a non issue because need based aid for grad school is almost non existent and wouldn’t put a dent in the cost, afaik. Most grad students get aid from tuition remission, TA, RA, GA, employers or loans.</p>
<p>I personally think you should plan to work during that year…and save some money to USE (consider your education your investment) for your grad school expenses. I would NOT advise sending your money to Switzerland or gifting it to your parents. Why wouldn’t you want to make an investment in your own education.</p>
<p>While it is very nice that you want to help your parents buy a house and vehicles, this is your choice. You could be using this money for your own college costs. Perhaps the house purchase could be located so YOU can live there as well, and commute to college.</p>
<p>Also, the financial info for your parents is NOT used at all when you apply to grad school (unless you are applying to law or med schools where some require parent info).</p>
<p>If you plan on working for a full year prior to your 2015 start of college, your income from 2014 will be used on your FAFSA…not that it matters at all, because as BrownParent noted, grad school aid is based on merit and not need. But you will also have some time to put money in the bank for use during college…and hopefully you are doing that now as well. </p>
<p>It sounds like you were hoping to spend down YOUR money in hopes of getting need based aid for grad school. Really…grad school aid is NOT like undergrad aid. Not at all. The schools’s desire to have you in their grad school cohort generally drives any merit awards given. </p>
<p>You will be eligible for a Grad student Plus Loan (or whatever it’s called). In addition, your grad school might award the Direct Loan to grad students (unsubsidized).</p>
<p>Also, you can likely work part time while in grad school.</p>
<p>I’m not sure I think you really have a financial problem here…except that you would prefer to save/invest all of your income instead of spending it on your college living costs. There are many ways to keep these costs down. Live with your parents. Rent only a room in someone’s home. Share an apartment with many others.</p>
<p>Grad school aid is MERIT based…so based on your stats. </p>
<p>Grad schools really don’t care what your EFC is since most grad students’ EFCs are small.</p>
<p>what were your undergrad grades? What are your GRE scores?</p>
<p>Are you getting a MS or PhD? in what area? (I see that your BS is in Nuclear Eng’g). </p>
<p>The grad school process is often highly competitive, especially for the funded programs. Even the so-called “safety schools” may only accept 10-15% of applicants. The best ones may only accept 5% or less.</p>
<p>If you’re going for a PhD program, it better be funded or it won’t be worth it.</p>
<p>^^^^ Indeed. If you aren’t offered full support for a Ph.D. program, the department is telling you that you are a second-class applicant who they don’t particularly believe has much potential. An MBA or MS Eng on the other hand would be something you would be expected to pay for completely out of your own funds and/or loans. You would only get some help with the costs of one of those if the department believed that you were one of their very top applicants.</p>
<p>Okay, so it probably doesn’t matter what I do, I won’t be getting any financial aid anyway unless it’s merit. That’s fine, I wasn’t aware that grad school aid was so different but it makes sense. My stats are pretty legit, I graduated with a bachelor of science in nuclear engineering, 3.94, haven’t taken the GRE yet but I’m spending time to study for it. Thinking a masters in engineering but I won’t stick around for a phd.</p>
<p>thumper1: I haven’t really thought about it in depth since I was countering on the GI Bill / Yellow Ribbon to cover everything, which upon further digging turned out not to be the case at all for “elite institutions.” But the company I’m thinking about working for next year actually does offer reimbursement, so I could go that route. Dunno if it ties me to a certain req’d year of service to them, have to look at that around interview time. Good call!</p>