<p>For one of my colleges, I got my FA award. It involves $9000 in loans ($3500 in Stafford sub., $3500 in Perkins, $2000 in Stafford unsub.). Few questions:</p>
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<li><p>Do we have to pay the with the full $9000 in loans, or can we take out a portion of those loans? With the $9000 and my gift aid, my family would only have to pay around $8000, which is totally affordable for my parents, but I'm not too keen about graduating with 36K in loans. </p></li>
<li><p>Would you recommend applying for on-campus jobs to help my parents pay the costs and therefore reduce the loans? 13K is the top of my parents' budget, so I want to get rid of as much loans as possible without increasing out-of-pocket costs that much. I don't know about off-campus jobs, since the college is a good ways from home and hence I'll be living on campus.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>You can apply for an on-campus job. There are specific WS jobs and then all sorts of regular jobs. There will be jobs in local stores, etc, as well.</p>
<p>You can get a job and work to help pay expenses. Be aware it may affect your financial aid a bit next year. </p>
<p>When I was growing up everyone worked during college and it was fine. On campus jobs aren’t generally too taxing.</p>
<p>You can adjust your loan amounts.</p>
<p>We got a similar award, except the perkins was was $1500. We ended up taking the Perkins and the subsidised $3500. We were comfortable with $5k for freshman year. When the financial aid paperwork came, there was a line to decline or adjust the amounts of each loan.</p>
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<p>An on campus job is not really going to generate enough money for you to pay your expenses to the college. If you were to get a work study job, you are talking about making somewhere between $75- $100/wk getting paid every 2 weeks. For most students, workstudy earnings are used to pay for misc. expenses.</p>
<p>You can chose to take all of the loans offered, you can choose to take none of the loans offered or anything in between. However, it would be up to you/your parents to fill the shortfall</p>
<p>If you are going to reduce your loan amount, it is wise to reduce starting with the the unsubsidized Staffords, as they will start accruing not insignificant interest the moment they are given out. That would be a reduction of $1000 ln loans for the first semester. You can request that you get work study in its place, but be aware that it is not guaranteed under most college WS terms that you find a WS job that fits your hours. But, yes, you can do that, and if there is no WS job, you can look for regular work.</p>
<p>If it doesn’t work out for the first term, you can request the unsubsidized Stafford back for the second term and get the full amount for the year for that term. In other words that $1000 you turn down for the fall, can be added to the spring to reduce your costs then. You can only do that for a second semester not the first when only half can be distributed.</p>