I need some advice to help a friend who’s in the situation where he has been pursuing a Biomedical Engineering major for 5 years. He has possibly 4 more years before he can graduate, but his student loans are going to stop giving him loans within the next year.
If you were put in his situation, what would you do?
There is a lot more details, but I don’t think they are necessary. I’ll probably edit this post if it’s needed…
I want to hear some helpful advice for such a critical situation. Any productive ideas would be appreciated.
Just to be clear are you saying he has been pursuing this degree for 5 years and have 4 more years to go. Has he been a part time student all this time. 9 years for a bachelors degree is excessive.
The link above gives information on the time limits for eligibility for student loans. In order for your friend to have been going to school for 5 years already and needing another 4 years to finish his BS, he either has been going to school part-time or has switched majors entirely to the point that he basically has to start over. Even at that, he should not need more than 3 more years if he has taken all of the Texas core courses that everybody has to take regardless of major.
If he has been attending full-time for 5 years because of major-switching, then he’s going to run into the excess hours penalty. This is true for all state schools in Texas. The state will not provide funding to universities to subsidize the resident rate for tuition for students who have exceeded the number of credit hours required for their BS degree by more than 30 hours. I’ve linked one college’s info page about this below, but this is true of all state schools in Texas. http://www.sfasu.edu/controller/businessoffice/students/excess_credit.asp