Paying for Grad School

Graduate School
1

<p>DS is graduating in May and has applied for Master's programs in civil engineering. So far he has been accepted at Michigan, Northwestern and Georgia Tech but he has not received any offers for funding. He filled out his own FASFA and his EFC was 0. When I looked at financial aid information on the Georga Tech website, it looked like they included family contribution in making their financial aid decisions. Is the family's income a factor? </p>

<p>We spent a lot on DS's undergrad education and he has a sister that is just a freshman so we still have 3 more years of tuition and housing payments. Bottom line, we never planned to help him with grad school. I always thought he'd be able to get a job coming out of school and if he wanted he could get an employer to help pay for grad school. In this economy, that doesn't seem to be true anymore. Unless we raid our retirement accounts (that have already been hit hard by the stock market) we aren't in a position to help him. Any insight would be appreciated!</p>

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<p>ROTC</p>

<p>Army ROTC has a great scholarship program and the Air Force one is more competitive.</p>

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<p>As a undergraduate student and will be pursuing graduate degree from Georgia Tech in Fall, I can tell you few things I have learned about FAFSA and Georgia Tech graduate policy. </p>

<p>First, yes FAFSA does effect by your family’s income level. However, If your son declare independent after certain age (I believe it’s 23 or 24) and have low income, I believe you can get some funding from FAFSA. However, doing so can eliminate your son from having the medical insurance combined with your family and other benefits. This is what I heard from a financial advisor at Georgia Tech in undergraduate study and I am not sure what exact benefit FAFSA gives since I was not eligible for it during my undergraduate study.</p>

<p>Second, most if not all Georgia Tech graduate student don’t receive GRA or GTA in first semester of their study. GRA is graduate research assistant where graduate student can receive full tuition + living stipends while attending masters by helping professor with research. GTA is teaching assistantship where graduate student help professor with test / homework grading and fill in for class when professor cannot attend lecture. GTA also gives full tuition waiver. Unless he comes in with some outstanding record or already found professor to do GRA with in his first semester, It is highly unlikely that he can get any financial help in first semester of joining. So it is likely that parent have to help for the first payment for initial semester,</p>

<p>GTA is picked randomly by student’s grade in undergraduate and GRE score and have limited spot for getting it. The GTA position is not offer for student who just got into graduate program. It is best in your son’s interest to find a GRA position while attending first semester by visiting the professor and show interest in his particular study. Even if your son’s goal is just getting master degree, he can lie to the professor that he intend on becoming doctor and just leave after master program is finished. (he may not be happy though, don’t expect recommendation letter). There’s two option in master, one is just taking classes and get masters or thesis option. Most thesis option I believe got GRA position however, it require 2 years to finish instead of 1 year.</p>

<p>Bottom line, economy is bad and it’s hard to find jobs out there. Don’t bash your son on not getting the job and give him support to finish his master. Think of it as second chance and if he will endeavor hard in school, he will get a great job in future. Having master will give him more opportunity to get hired from big corporation anyway.</p>

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<p>Depends on the school. I applied for an MPH program at Yale and Yale stated that they consider, for institutional purposes, all students under 26 years old and undertake medically-related education (medical, dental, public health). to be dependent and have to submit parental information to be calculated into their package. (I didn’t even bother; this is ridiculous.) A lot of medical schools also have this rule, where they want parental income included. Far as I know, most graduate schools don’t do this though. You’re generally independent and only you and your spouse’s income matters.</p>

<p>On the FAFSA, you are considered an independent student if you are in graduate school, regardless of your age. This will usually not threaten your medical insurance; that’s inaccurate information. My parents do not claim me as a dependent for taxes AND I am an independent student on the FAFSA (grad school), but I’m still on my father’s health insurance.</p>

<p>Most people in engineering master’s programs do one of three things:</p>

<p>1) Get a fellowship or a departmental job (teaching or research assistantship) to fund them
2) Get the degree funded by an employer
3) Finance it all with loans</p>

<p>I think most parents expect that children will finance their own graduate degrees. Most of my master’s student friends are funding their degrees with loans; a few of them have assistantships and even fewer of them are getting the degree paid for (I’m in public health).</p>

<p>As a side note, ROTC scholarships are not open to those pursuing graduate degrees. They’re only for high school students, college freshman, and college sophomores.</p>

<p>GTGblows - not sure why you thought you weren’t eligible for FAFSA. FAFSA’s just the application; if you’re a U.S. citizen or national you can fill it out regardless of your income. You may not have been eligible for need-based loans or grants based on your FAFSA EFC.</p>

<p>Do not lie to your professors about your intentions to get a doctoral degree. First of all, at the terminal level, it doesn’t even matter there. You get a GTA on the basis of your past work and your potential for helping the professor, not based on your aspirations to a PhD program. Besides, even if you have no intentions of getting a doctoral degree, people change their minds all the time (even if they DO have intentions). There’s really no reason to lie about it - I’m in a social science program right now and many of the master’s students get GRAs even if they have no intention of pursuing doctoral work later.</p>

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<p>About lying to professor to get GRA, this advice is from a student in Georgia Tech who is pursuing PhD. The professor will LIKELY to give you the GRA position if you state that you will be pursuing PhD program. Why woud professor train you during master with multi million dollar fundings if he cannot use him in later for help him with research. He’s paying you full tuition just to get you to be in the level of other PhD student to have break through in his research. He will likely to pick the person who loves research and continue to do so to obtain PhD. This advise is for the students who is going to Georgia Tech for master and it can be different for other school but that’s how it is here.</p>

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<p>Dependent status for tax purposes and eligibility for health insurance under a parent’s plan varies from contract to contract. Therefore, decisions as to whether to file separately need to be made carefully after reviewing each individual’s circumstances. Juillet’s plan may allow it, but many will not.</p>

7

<p>also, if you still include your son as a dependent on your own tax declarations, then (for some schools) your income will matter.</p>

<p>as someone else stated: grad school is paid for in a few ways: fellowships, assistantships, an employer footing the bill, or student loans. sounds like your son was lucky enough to get through his undergrad without any loans. sounds like he wasn’t lucky enough to get the school or an employer to foot the bill for his masters. he’ll probably have to take out loans.</p>

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<p>DS is just graduating this spring so he has no employer to fund grad school. He has been accepted to Michigan, Northwestern, Georgia Tech, and UIUC for a master program in engineering. Still trying to get funding at a couple of them. If not, looks like he’ll be taking out loans, studying hard and trying to get funding second semester or next year. The admissions person I talked to at GA Tech said that our families’ income would not be included.</p>

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<p>Why woud professor train you during master with multi million dollar fundings if he cannot use him in later for help him with research.</p>

<p>Because he needs help doing his research?</p>

<p>He will likely to pick the person who loves research and continue to do so to obtain PhD</p>

<p>You can still love research and get an MS.</p>

<p>I am overall dubious about this. Dishonesty in academia can come back to bite you in the butt. It’s a small world. Besides, it doesn’t make sense to lie about something that can be solved so easily without lies. He can go to the professor, express interest in the professor’s work, and tell him that he’s considering getting a PhD and would like to gain some research experience.</p>

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<p>There is absolutely NO WAY DS would ever misrepresent his intentions. At this point he is sure he only wants to get a MS. I tried to convince him he should leave his options open and tell the schools he was open to the possibility of going on to get his PHD. He refused. Wants to be totally above board. I’m sure that some people are “playing the game” and will say whatever they have to in order to gain any advantage that they can. He’s just not one to do that. I, for one, am proud of his character. :slight_smile: That’s one reason that I’m proud to say that I’m M’s mom!!</p>

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<p>Grad students are essentially worthless for the first few months. Why would you spend more time training students than you have to, from the PI’s point of view? GRAs are highly sought after because you don’t have to TA and can go full throttle on research, and so professors can usually be choosy.</p>

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<p>Well if you’re leaving with a masters I doubt you care too much about who they know in academia.</p>

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<p>Well it’s not like they can force you to get your Ph.D. I too am a principled person, but this is a lot of money we’re talking about.</p>

<p>I came pretty close to compromising my principles recently for prestigious funding (i.e. playing “the game”), but I refused to and got it anyway but I felt extremely lucky. However, I had a GRA already and so my education was already paid for either way. I am not sure if I would have acted in the same way if it were the difference between having to pay full freight and not.</p>

<p>Edit: Short story also. I came to GT expecting to get a masters and leave. I had already applied for internships at several places and gotten calls back, but then my advisor (whom I did not know at the time) got in on a large grant for 5 years and sought me out because I had relevant experience. This was in my first semester just after I had wisely sat for (and passed) the Ph.D prelims. Now I’m year 2 of a Ph.D and loving my experience. The point is, you absolutely cannot predict the future, and so your son cannot say with 100% certainty that he does not want a Ph.D.</p>

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<p>I found this post researching something else but wanted to comment. I have a very honest son and he is in a masters program. Finding an assistanship has been hard this year but he was surprised that the ratio of students who got one in the past were students that said they wanted the PhD track and then got their masters and left. I always thought that was highly unethical but maybe it is the way it is done at some schools. In some ways he felt he was being stupid funding himself, but on the other hand it just didn’t seem right to pretend he wanted a PhD and then “change his mind”. He was surprised when a PhD student said they lost 3 or 4 out of 12 to that route in the last couple of years.
I told him to really talk about both with his advisor, maybe he will want a PhD and regret not going that track, it was just the time and his immediate goals that led him to a masters/EdS.
Grad school is another world and seems to have somewhat different rules than undergrad, but not as much written about it.</p>

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<p>DS has decided to go to UIUC. Hasn’t gotten any funding, at least not yet. Received financial aid award letter and will be able to fund his entire graduate school education with loans. I just figured out how much his monthly payment would be if he does that and pays the loans off over 10 years. Pretty sizeable amount, especially in this economic climate. If he ends up doing that, he’ll struggle financially even if he gets a good job after graduation. If it turns out that at least some of his colleagues will get their educations paid for because they gamed the system and quit a PHD program after receiving their Master’s, I’ll be pretty disenchanted with the whole system.</p>

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<p>I’m with you…my son has more loans this year, we’ll see next year. If he really changes his mind fine, but he just can’t lie which I’m proud of. I hope they both can work and get the loans down as much as possible.</p>