Graduate financial aid

<p>This may or may not be posted in the wrong section but its my first thread so I thought to put it here. My dad was recently accepted to Columbia for a masters degree program. It is going to cost 90k and the school gives no fin. aid. He moved here from India in the late 1980s and wasnt a citizen so he didnt sign up for selective services. He is now but it's past that time so FAFSA wont give him any money either. I am entering UCI and my brother is a third year at UCR. We are def not rich and he really wants to make this decision to go for it. But we dont know how exactly we can get grants to pay for it, my mom will only let us if there is "minimal" loans. Please help me out guys, thanks!</p>

<p>First of all, what degree is he pursuing? While there are some general rules about financial aid, specific fields and degrees sometimes deviate. </p>

<p>Second, funding for grad degrees is completely different than funding for undergrad. There are two general types of graduate degrees: research, and professional. </p>

<p>Research degrees (MS, MA, PhD, etc) are often funded, depending on the financial strength of the program, the financial viability of the field, whether doctoral (better) or masters (worse), and all assuming it is full-time. Said funding is occasionally in the form of a fellowship, either from the school or external source, which covers all your costs and even provides a stipend and yet incurs little or no obligation on the student. More often the funding is in the form of an assistantship which usually has a smaller stipend and requires that the student either perform research work or else help teach. </p>

<p>Professional degrees (MBA, JD, MPP, etc) are almost never funded. A few exceptional students at some full-time programs will see scholarships or fellowships, but for the most part you pony up the cash or get your employer to do it. There is some occasional money for some of these programs, offered by outside groups and generally limited to specific groups - Native Americans pursing public policy degrees, first-generation college grads going for an MBA, etc. They rarely amount to much.</p>

<p>It should be noted that Stafford loans are still an option but there are no general federal grants for grad study. The loans are available at any time, however, up to $20k a year. But barring special circumstances, it is likely that it is your only source of cash.</p>

<p>Thank you! He said it was a MSc</p>

<p>Thank you! He said it was an MSc</p>

<p>In what field? The school has said they will not provide aid and the federal government only funds a relative few students, almost all at the doctoral level. The only possible way for him to get funding is if his particular field has some special program that offers funding, and to be honest that is extremely unlikely.</p>

<p>If your father has already been accepted for Fall 2014 and has not been offered any money, it’s unlikely that he will get offered any. Most graduate students who have funding have it through their institution. Unless his job is willing to pay or he can compete for a national scholarship in his field (which is very uncommon and limited to shortage fields like nursing), he will have to borrow the money.</p>

<p>If by MSc you mean the master’s of science or MS at Columbia…Columbia offers that degree in a whole lot of fields. Well, actually, they offer the MA in a lot of fields, but there are still a lot of MS programs - business, epidemiology, journalism, actuarial science…you get the picture. So what field is he trying to get his MS in? Regardless, out of all the fields I can think of at Columbia that offer the MS I can’t think of any of them that offer funding as a matter of course to their students EXCEPT maybe some of the ones in SEAS.</p>

<p>Thank you for all your responses, and he was able to get a new job with enough money for us to go school and him! I am so grateful!!! :)) </p>