stormageddon

Say if I got accepted to a university that has a COA of $25,000 per year - $15,000 for tuition and $10,000 for living expenses (simplified example, I know, but bear with me). If I wasn't funded at all, I would technically be able to take out $25,000 of loans (even though I know this would be extremely unadvisable). If I got a tuition waiver, I assume I would be able to take out the remaining $10,000 of "need" that I have for living expenses. The thing that I'm wondering is if assistantships count towards a person's financial aid package. So if, in the example above, I got a tuition waiver and an assistantship that pays a stipend of $10,000 a year, would I be ineligible to take out any federal loans? Or would the assistantship not count towards financial aid, making me eligible to still take out the $10,000 for living expenses? I completely realize that taking out loans when you don't need to is bad. I was just talking to someone the other day and was told that stipends don't count towards financial aid. I thought that seemed weird - work-study is included in financial aid packages for undergraduates after all. My assumption is that assistantship stipends count towards financial aid but regular part-time jobs (whether inside or outside the university) would not. Is this a good general rule of thumb, or does it depend on your university? What's the policy at your school?

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Thanks you guys for being honest. I'm really interested in doing research (esp. dealing with federal/state policies that affect families in or on the brink of poverty) and have debated between doing an MPP with a focus on family/poverty or getting a a phd in human development or family studies with a focus on policy. Any thoughts on doing the latter? Maybe that would be a better fit.

I'm a rising senior and just decided I want to do an MPP program. I've heard that a lot of programs require/strongly prefer a few years of full-time policy-related work experience, but I was wondering if you guys could point me to programs that don't care so much about it? If anyone has gotten accepted to any programs without relevant work experience, I'd love to hear about it. I'm in the beginning stages of my search, so all I know for sure is that I really want to focus on social policy (more specifically, I'm very interested in poverty alleviation and family policy). I'd also prefer to go somewhere with as cold of weather as possible (especially in the summer - anything over 75 feels pretty miserable to me), but I definitely wouldn't let that keep me from going to an awesome school if it also happens to be somewhere with super hot weather. Anyway, I have a 4.0 GPA from a public state university in Child Development and Family Relations. I have pretty much all my major courses and gen eds done now, though, so I'm going to be tacking on an economics minor by the time I graduate. I'm also expecting to do well on my GRE (knock on wood) - I'm planning to study for it pretty extensively and I'm a decent test taker. I should be able to get at least a couple strong letters of recommendation as well. Anyway, as for experience: I did an Alternative Breaks trip one year that focused on the homeless population, and I'm planning on doing it again this year if I can. I also studied abroad a semester in China. For work experience, I've worked in my school's library, tutored Calculus through my schools Tutoring program, tutored/helped in the homework room in an afterschool program with younger kids, am currently a peer mentor for my school's TRIO center, did a couple months as an administrative assistant in the same department, and am going to do more admin-type stuff this year back in the tutoring department. I'm also planning on taking a gap year before starting a master's program and will be doing a yearlong internship where I'll basically be a live-in houseparent/foster parent (along with a couple other interns) for 4-5 abused/neglected kids at a time between the ages of 0 and 6. So I will have some semi-pertinent work experience when I apply to different places, but I won't have any official policy-related internships or jobs or anything. If anyone has any recommendations for which schools I might want to take a look at, I'd really appreciate it!