<p>My husband passed away recently and I can no longer help out with financial support for college. Son will be attending grad school in the fall for MS + MBA degrees. Besides the Stafford loans and Grad Plus loans, is there any financial aid available for him?</p>
<p>Most of the non-loan aid for grad students I know comes from fellowships (gift aid from the school), teaching/research assistantships, military scholarships, and employer reimbursement plans. I’m pretty sure that my state offers tuition waivers for financially needy grads at the public univeristies. And, of course, most grad students are qualified to get jobs which pay better than undergrads. If he would consider working for a public entity he may be eligible for some loan forgiveness programs.</p>
<p>Most, if not all, of the fellowships and assistantships go to doctoral candidates. He did not feel that it was honest to do as some suggested and begin a PhD and leave early with the masters. No employer in the picture yet. Not interested in the military. Soooo, I guess it might mean only loans for him. I will check about the tuition waivers, though. Thanks!</p>
<p>I see…didn’t realize his school also offers the PhD. If he already has undergrad debt, any chance that he would consider a gap year to save up money and then a non-PhD school so he would have a chance for tuition remission/stipends? </p>
<p>If he might consider some sort of public service, there are alot of links to loan forgiveness programs here:
[FinAid</a> | Loans | Loan Forgiveness](<a href=“Your Guide for College Financial Aid - Finaid”>Loan Forgiveness - Finaid)</p>
<p>Good luck, and I’m very sorry to hear of your loss.</p>
<p>Thanks sk8rmom! We are searching all options, so I appreciate the link. I was thinking that maybe he can go to his departments and fa office and see if there is any more money available or maybe any unfilled assistantships.</p>
<p>lkf725, write to the financial aid department AND school’s student services departments that you have extenuating circumstances that make it extremely difficult to take on additional debt (e.g. death of a loved one). Submit it ASAP.</p>
<p>Thanks tenisghs, we will try that immediately! We appreciate your suggestion!</p>
<p>I just wanted to offer my sympathies to you and your family…</p>
<p>Thank you for your kind thoughts. It is a tough time and it makes all of the changes and decisions just that much harder. Hopefully, once everything is settled, it will be a little easier.</p>
<p>I’m so sorry for your loss. I’m sure it makes it harder to even think clearly to make decisions and plans.
Whenever I’m faced with a terrible situation, I try to figure out the “worst case scenerio” and how I could handle that.
Worst case, you and your son decide that he has to take time out from his grad program. Many people have done that. Worst case then - he takes longer to get MBA. Best case then, he finds new focus and directs his grad degree to something better.</p>
<p>Wishing you and son the best of all cases…</p>
<p>You are so right, dragonmom. We have already discussed the possibility of running out of money and, in that case, son would drop back to a part-time evening program while working or even take a break from school. He promised his sister to help her get through college, if necessary, but I hope that I can handle this on my own. He is a newly graduated engineer but I would think that his earning power would be even greater with the grad degrees. But if he needs to work to keep himself afloat, then so be it.</p>
<p>lkf, I worked as a HR Director for a large company. Hired many engineers of all types for facilities around the country. Many of them were fairly recent grads who took advantage of the 100% tuition reimbursement program we offered to get their graduate degrees. It did make a difference in their salary once they were done, but not enough to immediately offset the actual cost of the degree! In other words, maybe he’d be ahead of the game to start at the slightly lower salary and have an employer pay the $30K or so tuition. He’d only be deferring the salary bump by a year or two…and it may not add up to $30K in that amount of time. Just another perspective…</p>