<p>We are a one (very modest) income family. I've been using partial Pell Grants for the last 4 years as I took pre-req classes at the local community college. Now I am transferring to a university this fall. I have several questions and I don't know who to ask...</p>
<p>I was offered a very nice financial aid package from the local University. In it is also the subsidized and unsubsidized loans. If I accept these, do they only accrue a balance if it is needed? For example, lets say I am short $500 on financial aid. Do I get to choose to either pay out of pocket or have it go to a loan, or does it do the whole $500 automatically to the loan?</p>
<p>Is it a good idea to accept both forms of loans even if you may not use both forms? I'd obviously like to stick with the subsidized loan, but should I accept the unsub one, too, just in case?</p>
<p>I'm not sure which college to ask these questions. I was accepted to the university, but haven't gone to orientation yet, which is where I will sign up for classes. All this financial aid is contingent on my enrollment being full time and I'm not even sure it is possible to go full time until I talk to an advisor and I will not be assigned an advisor until orientation. Should I take my questions to the community college that I'm transferring from? I have a feeling they will tell me that all these questions can only be answered by the university's financial aid office. </p>
<p>Can anyone answer these questions? I'm stressing out over this!</p>
<p>Colleges do things differently from each other, so yes, you need to talk to the college where you are going since they can tell you exactly how to deal with these things.</p>
<p>When you apply for these loans, you might as well take the entire unsubsidized amount and stash it into savings if you don’t use it all. If you are thinking of going into the subsidized amounts, it might be easier to do it that way too, though you will pay interest and origination fees that way. What you need to ask your financial aid office is if the process of asking for the money as you need it is allowed and how onerous it is to do so. I have known of people who have taken a portion of the amount then gotten more because they ended up needing more, but considering it requires more work and time on a number of people to process each request, your financial aid office may discourage this and refuse to do it on an "as you need it " basis due to the administrative work it takes to do this. It’s not intended to be a credit line that you can draw upon as you please.</p>
<p>Congratulations on your award. Hope all works out as you wish. Let us know if you can go full time.</p>
<p>It’s the other way around - the subsidized accounts will not accrue interest (the government pays it while you are in school), whereas the unsubsidized ones will accrue interest.</p>
<p>In the two universities I’ve been to, the way it has worked is that if you accept the loans in the spring and fill out all the documents - when they come in in the fall, they are applied to whatever balance you have in your student account. However, there is usually nothing stopping you from throwing your own money onto your student account to pay, even once the loans have come in and you don’t have a balance anymore.</p>
<p>So let’s say that you have a $500 balance in your student account. You can just pay the $500 out of pocket before your loans come in. Your loans come, and now you have a $7,500 credit. The school usually issues you a refund of the credit on your account, either through direct deposit or a paper check. At that point you can choose to deposit the money into your bank account or you can send it back to the lender by paying off the loan with the loan money.</p>
<p>In my experience, both sub and unsub loans may have origination fees, but the fee is deducted from the loan before they give it to you. So instead of me getting $8,500 (I’m in grad school), I got $8,415.</p>