Many students who thought their parents could fund most of their education are seeing that dream dry up as the financial crisis deepens. As a result, they are asking how much they can get in student loans so that they can finish their college degrees.

First of all, you need to understand that there are different loan programs for college students.

The Perkins Loan provides very low interest rate loans to the neediest students. Undergraduate students can receive up to $4000 with the average award being $2206.

The Stafford Student Loan is perhaps the best known and the most common loan program. Students can either receive the funds directly from the government (Direct Student Loan) or through private lenders (FFEL).

Subsidized Stafford Student Loans are granted based on need. Unsubsidized Stafford Student Loans can be obtained by any student. The amount depends on how many credit hours a student has earned:

· $5500 for first year students (up to $3500 can be subsidized)
· $6500 for second year students (up to $4500 can be subsidized)
· $7500 for third year students and beyond (up to $5500 can be subsidized)

In addition, independent students (students who cannot be claimed on their parent’s income taxes) can receive between $9500 and $12500 depending on their year in school. Graduate and professional students can get $20,500.

Students can not borrow more than their cost of attendance minus the amount of any Federal Pell Grant they are eligible for and minus any other financial aid they get. Students may receive less than the annual maximum amounts depending on their other financial aid awards.

The next kind of student loan is one that parents take out for their children. It is known as the PLUS loan. Unlike Stafford loans, there is a credit check for PLUS loans and not all parents will qualify. If you are attending an expensive school, the PLUS loan may help pay the costs better than the Stafford loan because the limits can be much higher. In fact, the limits are the total cost of attendance minus any other financial aid you receive.

The funds are generally applied to any amount a student owes the school such as tuition or room and board. The excess is distributed to the parents. The PLUS loan accrues interest while the student is in school, so parents are encouraged to make at least interest payments to avoid compounding interest.

The final category of loans are private student loans. Many banks award amounts between $1000 and $40,000 to credit worthy students for expenses such as tuition and living expenses. If a student has not established credit themselves, they will need a co-signer for this kind of loan.

Because private student loans are not backed by the government, the interest rates are much higher. Students should view private student loans as the loans of last resort.

It is possible to cover the cost of attendance including tuition and living expenses at most colleges and universities across the United States with a combination of available student loans.

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Many students work their way through college. Whether they are working a part time on campus job, have a part time off campus job, or work 40 hours a week while going to school, they need the income they derive from working to help defray the college expenses.

Traditionally, students have worked in the school’s cafeteria or library to help pay for their living expenses. Usually this is through the school’s work study program. Work study is a federally funded program that is part of a student’s total financial aid package. The federal government provides most of the money for these jobs. That’s why the colleges are more likely to hire a student who has work study money than a student who doesn’t. The fed, is in fact, picking up most of the tab.

Most work study jobs pay slightly more than minimum wage. Students are not permitted to work more than 20 hours a week, and some colleges have an even lower cap. At Washington and Lee College, freshmen are not permitted to work more than 5 hours a week with work study aid. The college makes up the difference in the form of grants.

Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to take work study jobs, even if they are part of a financial aid package. That’s because off campus jobs pay more and don’t have the maximum hour restrictions. For instance, a call center job may pay $11 an hour for 25 hours a week while the on campus job calling alumni for donations pays $9 for 15 hours.

Also, a few off campus jobs actually have tuition remission programs for their employees. For instance, students who work for the Geek Squad and are majoring in computer, science, or engineering related fields can get up to $2500 in tuition paid for by the company in addition to earning a good salary. That money can cover half or more of the tuition at a state school.

But, some students are not lucky enough to be able to afford to work part time when going to school. Because of their family responsibilities and financial obligations, they must work 40 hours a week at a traditional job. Many of these students attend college through flexible programs that meet at night or on the weekends. They may also attend only part time taking 6 or more years to get through a bachelor’s degree program.

Students working full time should consult their company’s human resource department to see whether the business has a program to help student employees. Many companies have tuition remission programs for students.

There are also grants and scholarships for people who have to work full time. This may allow some to cut back on their work hours.

So whether you work 5 hours a week or 40 plus, the challenges of working, doing well in school, and having a healthy life are many. But, the income from work makes the option of school a reality for many.

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The National Health Service Corps Scholarship is a program funded by the federal government to increase the number of graduate level health professionals in underserved areas. The scholarship is available to future physicians in both MD and DO programs, dentists, certified nurse-midwives, certified family nurse practitioners, and physician assistants.

The National Health Service Corps Scholarship pays for tuition and fees plus offers a monthly stipend. In exchange, the scholarship recipients agree to work in a designated underserved area for one year for each year of the scholarship award with a minimum of two years of service.

Applicants must be U.S. citizens. They must attend an accredited program full time.

Applicants who can demonstrate that they have a real commitment to serve traditionally underserved populations and have the geographic flexibility to move to such areas are given first consideration. All candidates must be considered well prepared for the program. Additionally, they must have a strong interest in primary care. Applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds are also favored.

For doctors, primary care is internal medicine, family practice, ob-gyn, and psychiatry. Doctors can take no more than 4 years to finish their internship and residency before beginning their National Health Service Corps Scholarship service.

There are the most vacancies in rural areas. Opportunities in inner cities also exist. Some people on the scholarship will qualify to serve as health practitioners in Federal Prisons.

The National Health Service Corps prepares a list of eligible vacancies each year. Once a person accepts a position, the salary must be submitted to the government agency for approval. This is so that the hiring office cannot take advantage of the fact that the health professional must fill one of the vacancies by offering them a lower salary.

If a person accepts a National Health Service Corps scholarship and then does not complete the required service, they are required by law to pay back the loan amount times three.

If working in a rural or inner city area appeals to you, the National Health Service Corps scholarship provides you with a good way to fund your post-graduate medical education.

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Division I schools major sports programs such as football and men’s basketball have recruiters who go after the top players from around the country. Less well funded sports, even at major schools, and all sports at Division II and III schools do not have this luxury. While the coaches are aware of the high school athletes in their immediate area, students who want to obtain an athletic scholarship to attend college can enhance their chances by promoting themselves to coaches at schools where they would like to attend.

The first thing that you should know is that thousands of students attend colleges and universities with the help of athletic scholarships. If you are an outstanding athlete in any sport, talk to your coach about helping you to get a sports related scholarship.

Your coach will help you to pick out realistic target schools. If you are a good player on a good basketball team, you may have a shot at a Division II school. Don’t set your sites only on the schools that made the Sweet 16.

Put together a list of schools that you would like to attend. Don’t base this solely on the prowess of their athletic team. Consider whether they offer the major you’d like to study and the general environment where you would like to spend four years of your life. Take into consideration whether the school is in a large city or a small village.

Don’t overlook sports team opportunities at smaller or lesser known colleges. Many times, teams there can be quite nurturing.

If you don’t believe you have a realistic chance at a pro career or if your sport doesn’t offer a pro circuit, choose your college based on the following factors:

1. What school you would really like to attend. Pick a school where you would go even if the athletic scholarship opportunity wasn’t there.

2. What team you would like to play on. The coach and the players that you’ll be spending a lot of time with make a big difference. Pick a team that matches your personality.

3. The total financial aid package. Many people think an athletic scholarship is equal to a full ride and are disappointed to find that the aid covers only a fraction of the total cost of attendance. Keep in mind that you will be giving up opportunities to work, study, and have fun in college in exchange for playing on the team. Balance out the prospect of money with the commitments you will make.

If you are serious about getting a scholarship, talk to the admissions offices at the schools you are interested in early. Coaches are not allowed to talk to potential players ahead of time. But, the admissions office can be recruiting during a student’s Junior year.

If you are interested in a program, you can contact the coach by email late in your Junior year of high school. Tell him you are interested in his program and invite him to follow your senior season. If you are going to send out multiple emails, make sure they are personalized with the name of the coach and the name of the school. There’s nothing more embarrassing than sending a letter to Harvard’s coach praising Yale’s team. Include your name, high school, and all contact information including home address, phone numbers, and email information. If you think it helps to make your case, include information on grades, test scores, and community service.

It is possible to attend college with the help of an athletic scholarship. Playing college level sports just might be one of the highlights of your life.

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The students graduating from high school are an unlucky crowd in many ways. First of all, there are a lot of them – down only slightly from last year’s highest ever crop of graduates. Next, more of them are going to college. Nearly 77 percent of students will attend some form of post-secondary education directly after college. The financial crisis has affected the ability of student loans. Finally, the endowments of many colleges have shrunk which has made the aid they have traditionally made available decrease. In this environment, it is important to maximize your chances of getting a good financial aid package. This article includes tips for increasing your financial aid.

First of all, you might consider going to a college where you are “above average.” If you are applying to the most competitive schools and are in the middle of the pack in terms of grades and test scores, the college has little incentive to sweeten the financial aid package to get you to come. But, if you will help the college increase their statistics or provide needed variety to the class, they may be willing to give you more in terms of free aid.

If you don’t think the FAFSA Expected Family Contribution amount represents your family’s true situation, you can file an appeal with the school. This generally only works if there is something extraordinary such as a recent layoff of a primary income earner or very high health care bills. But, it doesn’t take much effort to fill out an appeal form and it could bring in thousands of dollars in aid.

If you get financial aid offers from two schools and the college you really want to attend comes in lower than the other one, make a copy of your second choice’s award letter and forward it to the first choice school. They may match it.

But don’t just depend on the institutional aid. Go out and look for scholarships yourself.

There are free online databases of scholarships that you can search to find money to apply for. Some of these scholarships actually go unclaimed each year because nobody applies. Doing a little front end work can save you a lot of money and allow you to go to your first choice school.

While it may be harder to get into college and to pay for college than ever before, resourceful students will find a way to make post-secondary education a reality.

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Once you have located a scholarship that you would like to receive, you must complete an application. The application process may require that you write a statement of some kind. These compositions can be a big part of the competition. So, here’s how to write scholarship essays.

There are different kinds of essays. Some are similar to normal academic writing. For instance, the Ayn Rand Foundation sponsors an Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest every year which requires that students reflect on the author’s monumental book. Others require specific kinds of research. The National Fire Sprinkler Association chooses a specific law each year and asks students to write their opinion about that law. Still others are similar to the personal statement that you are already writing for your college applications.

The first thing you have to decide about scholarship essays is that you are going to approach it right. That means, you are going to get all of the supporting paperwork and information in. Many people put a lot of effort into the essay itself but are disqualified because they failed to send in transcripts or do some other required component.

Next, you have to develop a good essay. As a soon to be high school graduate, it is expected that you can put your thoughts on paper in a coherent way. Many of these scholarship essays don’t require great stretches of creative writing. The all-ink.com essay asks for 50 to 200 words on the person who has had the most impact on your life.

Always have a teacher or other good writer go over your scholarship essays ahead of time. They may be able to draw out points that you hadn’t considered. They will also be able to spot obvious mistakes in grammar and spelling that you may have missed because you were so close to the material.

Finally, you need to figure out what the scholarship committee is going to want from you. For instance, the Ayn Rand foundation is a libertarian organization that holds up the free market as their central belief. It would be a complete waste of time to write an essay espousing the values of Democratic Socialism for them. Instead, find a scholarship program which is more in line with your values and write a good essay for them.

Winning a scholarship essay is quite pleasant. In addition to having the money for college, you will have an accomplishment that you can put on your resume after you graduate. You will also be able to take pride in the fact that you bested so many other people in a competition of ideas and words.

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If you want to qualify for financial aid, you start by filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (the FAFSA). This form gets the ball rolling on all federal, state, and institutional financial aid.

The FAFSA should be filled out as soon as possible after January 1 if you are starting school in the summer or fall. Many financial aid programs require that the FAFSA be completed and submitted no later than March 15 or no funds will be dispursed.

Every college bound student should fill out the FAFSA even if they think their parents’ income and assets won’t qualify them for aid. Many, many students have been pleasantly surprised that they do in fact qualify for some kinds of aid. In fact, every college student qualifies for unsubsidized Stafford student loans regardless of their parent’s income.

You will fill out the FAFSA for free at www.fafsa.ed.gov. You will need to apply for a PIN number at the same time. You must reapply for the FAFSA each year.

About a month after you fill out the FAFSA, you should receive your SAR – Student Aid Report. The SAR will state your Expected Family Contribution – EFC. This is the figure that your family is expected to meet regardless of where you go to school. So, if your family’s EFC is $6000, that is what you will ideally pay whether you go to a college that costs $15,000 or $50,000.

The college itself will take the data from the SAR and generate an Award Letter. The Award Letter will break down how your demonstrated need will be met. This includes scholarships, grants, work study, and loans.

Many colleges guarantee that they will meet the full need amount of every admitted student. This means that they will come up with a package in the award letter that covers the cost of attendance including tuition and living expenses, subtracting out only the EFC. However, not every college is able to meet the full need.

If you want to attend a college that can not meet your full demonstrated need, you will have to come up with additional money from your family or by taking out extra loans.

Also, some Award Letters that meet the student’s full demonstrated need fill the package with loans while others offer more in the way of grants and scholarships. So, be sure to compare what is in the award letter along with the total amount covered.

Getting into college is only the first step of the process. The next step is to secure funding for the experience. A college education can cost more than a house in some areas of the country making the experience the most expensive venture of your life. Getting on the financial aid train early can allow you to go to the best college at the best price.
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Everyone has heard of scholarships for athletes and for top students. But, did you know that if you have a particular artistic talent, you can also attend college for free or at a discounted rate? Most colleges have some scholarship money set aside for students with strengths in theater, art, music, and dance.

Some of these scholarships are funded directly by the colleges. Alumni have set up scholarships to support the arts. Or, the college has decided to develop a particular artistic department and has set aside funds to attract the best students in the discipline.

If you are interested in one of these scholarships, you can start talking to the admissions representative as well as the chair of the department. Express an interest in the ir program specifically as opposed to the major in general. Find out which professors teach in your area of specialization and see if you can set up an appointment with them.

Basically, when you are trying to get an institutional arts scholarship, it helps to have everyone possible at the school on your side. After you meet with each professor, send a personalized thank you note. If you have a show or win a competition, send a news clipping to the professors.

By letting the department and the admissions committee know that you are serious about pursuing art at their school, you will have a good chance at getting one of the scholarships they have set aside for artistic purposes.

There are also scholarships for artistic students that are not restricted to specific schools. For instance, Young Arts awards 20 scholarships of up to $10,000 each year to students in creative writing, dance, theater, instrumental music, and vocal music.

In the Scholastic Art Awards, students compete for recognition and scholarship money in the fields of painting, sculpture, new media, and more.

Students pursuing a degree in studio arts, commercial art, or architecture can apply for the WorldStudio Foundation Scholarships

The Jazz Performance Awards give up to $2000 for students who demonstrate unusual skill in Jazz performance.

There is no way to cover every scholarship available in a short article like this. If you want to locate a number of artistic scholarships, you should sign up for a free scholarship database service. This will allow you to find artistic scholarships being offered throughout the country for students who excel in dance, theater, music, or visual arts.

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Unclaimed scholarships are funds that were available in a given year but nobody applied for or was deemed qualified for. Millions of dollars in aid goes unclaimed each year.

Some of these unclaimed scholarships are the result of extremely tight restrictions being put on the funds. For instance, there is a scholarship at Stanford University that is specifically for reformed prostitutes. That one goes unclaimed almost every year!

But there are many, many scholarships that ordinary people could qualify for, if only they applied. The trick is digging deep and finding them.

The best way to find scholarships is to sign up for a free national database of scholarships. You should never pay to access scholarship information and never pay to apply for a scholarship. Both of those services are scams.

But, when you sign up for access to the scholarship databases, you will first fill out a profile. This may ask you many questions that you consider odd. That is because the computer is trying to match you to these unusual scholarships which sometimes go unclaimed.

For instance, you will be asked your height. For a woman who is 5′4, that may seem like a strange question, but if she were 5′11, she would qualify for a scholarship from the Tall Clubs International. If she were 4′11, she would qualify for a scholarship from the National Association of Short Statured Adults.

Left handed people qualify for special scholarships too. Juanita College in Pennsylvania has a scholarship that only left handed people qualify for.

So, the first step in the process is to fill out the application and see what matches the computer can make for you.

The second step is to search out scholarships yourself using the search tools available.

But the most important step is actually filling out the applications. This can be a daunting task. But there have been people who have gone to the trouble to secure college scholarships who have ended up having everything – room, board, tuition, and books – paid for by a bunch of small scholarships. Putting the effort in can pay off in big ways.

Because there are thousands of dollars in unclaimed scholarships that roll over each year, it makes sense to go after this “low hanging fruit.” Fund your college education with scholarships that might otherwise have gone unclaimed.

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Many people think that scholarships are only given to super-athletes and super-brains. But there are many different types of scholarships and almost everyone who is able to get into college is able to qualify for some kind of scholarship if they only put some effort into it. This article covers the different types of scholarships commonly awarded.

First of all, we have the scholarships for people who have high grades and test scores. The National Merit Scholarship is granted to students who score particularly highly on their PSAT exam during their junior year of high school. Semi-finalists are then invited to submit their grades, letters of recommendation, and essays from teachers to compete for the Finalist designation. Some of these students will win $2500 directly. But, most get their funding because colleges compete to attract students with this designation and often offer full tuition scholarships for these people.

Individual colleges and universities also give merit scholarships to students with high grades. These are often called “honors scholarship” or “presidential scholarships.” Contact the financial aid officers at the schools you are interested in to see how you can qualify for one of these merit based scholarships.

Athletic scholarships are another type of scholarship. Many people think of Division I Football and Men’s Basketball when they think of athletic scholarships, but the truth is that most schools set aside money to help people on a variety of teams. Keep in mind that smaller schools may offer partial scholarships rather than full rides.

You may qualify for free money based on the major you select. Some national organizations sponsor scholarships to help students who are coming into the profession. Other times, an alumni of a college, recognizing the role his or her professors played in their own development, will offer a scholarship for incoming or continuing students in that major.

There are also scholarships for students who are of a particular ethnicity or religion. The United Negro College Fund, for instance, helps African American students attend historically black colleges. Colleges which were founded by a religious order but are now considered secular may have some “left over” scholarships for students of a specific faith.

Essay scholarships are essentially competitions where students compete to write the best composition on a specific topic. There are also speech competitions that offer scholarships along the same terms.

Community organizations and businesses offer scholarships to local students. Ask your guidance counselor how to qualify for these funds.

Once you are in school, the college or university has a number of funds available for continuing students. And, transfer students are not left out in the cold as there are special scholarships just for people who are changing colleges.

There are a number of different types of scholarships. Staying on top of the variety of programs will make it likely that you can attend the college of your dreams.

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