Financial aid for grad students?

[Mish19]

I'm considering going back to school for my master's degree and I was wondering if there is any financial aid and/or grant/scholarship money out there for grad students.
If anyone has websites with that info I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[skuttle]

I just graduated from law school and I had federal financial aid for all three years. Just go to http://www.fafsa.ed.gov for all the info you need. Also contact the financial aid department at the school...sometimes they are helpful.

I qualified for both subsidized (interest paid by gov't while you're in school) and unsubsidized (interest accrues the whole time) loans...I think it totaled about $10,000 a semester. Unfortunately, there are no grants available for graduate studies. As far as scholarships go, you can contact the financial aid office at your school and they should be able to give you lots of info on scholarships available at your school.

If you have any questions, feel free to PM me. I got financial aid for both my undergraduate and law school so I'm a pro at filling out those forms.

 

[maleficent1959]

Finaid.org is a good place to start with information about the different types of aid that is out there and how to obtain it. Fastweb.com is also good -- you create a profile and they match you to scholarships and grants in their database.

You definitely want to contact the financial aid office at the university. Many schools have a universal scholarship form you can fill out and they'll consider you for any you qualify for. True, many scholarships are for undergrads, but the money is there for graduate students -- you just have to work a little harder to find it.

You may also want to contact the department you'll be in to see what aid and scholarships they have for incoming grad students and what the deadline for all those applications is.

You can always do it the old-fashioned way and look through the books in the reference section at your local library. Tomes are published every year about where money is and they are often categorized by field of study, gender, and there are some for re-entry students and non-traditional as well.

Leave no stone unturned. You would be amazed at some of things that you can get a scholarship for.

 

[DocRafiki]

Most of the grad students I've known have been paid to go to school since they worked on assistantships or whatever they're called.

It's easy to get federal loans from your school. If you reach your max like I did, though, that's when it gets difficult; you have to go with a private company. http://www.aessuccess.org/ holds my private loan now. They're registered with UPromise, so that's a plus. They have a segment that deals with graduate and professional school loans.

The federal loan max is pretty high, though. You shouldn't need it if you live like a student and go to a state school as a resident. My private loans were needed to pay the out-of-state fees.