<p>I'm planning on taking out a little extra of my financial aid to be able to pay for summer classes. Would it be alright if I use a small portion of that to do a week of volunteer work abroad? It'll be something I can put on my resume</p>
<p>Officially? You cannot use federal financial aid for anything other than educational purposes. A trip abroad is not educational if you don’t receive college credit for it. (Private financial aid usually comes with similar strings attached.)</p>
<p>However, nobody will check on you to see what you do with the money.</p>
<p>Do you think your own personal gains will justify the expense? I doubt that anybody will be impressed by that line on your resume. All it says is that you had the money to pay for a week abroad.</p>
<p>Personally, I wouldn’t recommend it.</p>
<p>What type of “volunteer work abroad” are you talking about? Is this more of a “go on vacation and help someone out while I’m there” type of trip? I’m not saying it is…but it could be seen as such.</p>
<p>In my opinion, financial aid money should be used for school. That’s what it’s for. If you have extra leftover, put it away…because you’ll need it sooner or later. Whatever I have left over on my Pell grant and Map grant every semester gets put into the bank so it can accumulate some interest, and be there to fall back on for books, supplies…anything school related.</p>
<p>In all reality…being able to put down that you did a week of volunteer work is not going to significantly change your resume. I see stuff like that a lot on here. A lot of people think that the 10 hours they spent ladling soup at a soup kitchen over the last year are going to increase their chances…but…that’s really just padding. I mean no offense by that, but it’s basically what the case is. Unless you show real dedication to volunteer projects over very long periods of time…they aren’t going to change much in the way of opportunities. </p>
<p>If you were planning on doing it as a personal learning experience and to grow as an individual, it would probably mean a lot more.</p>
<p>People use their financial aid money for a lot worse things…</p>
<p>This is very true. I shudder to think of all the financial aid money that gets blown on booze and drugs every year.</p>
<p>How about exercising your charitable instincts right here at home?</p>