dudedolittle

If your funding situation is for 9 months, and the project your are working on goes for a bit mid summer are you required to work it? It isn't delineated in the offer. I guess a better way to say it is: if you are given a 9 month/32 week offer, and you are offered a smaller amount to work in the summer on the same project do you have to? Can they revoke your funding for the fall if you don't?

It's your life: Live it the way you want to live it and just keep your eyes on your goals.

A C at the program I am attending puts you on academic probation. One more of those buggers and you loose your tuition remission.

Thinking further. The terms of my private loans are fixed at 3.4 %. I had great credit at 19 and my parents had amazing credit. Not many people have fixed interest rates. So, this might be dumb. What if I took the subsidized stafford loans necessary to pay interest that would accrue on the private loan and my unsubsidized loans from undergrad. Would this be dumb?

I hear everyone. I guess there is no rush to switch debt for debt in the first year. I am allotted all the Subsidized Stafford Loans. It would just take 4 years of that to switch the debt out. I realize it may result in higher debt. However, for someone looking to work for government agencies and non-profits I don't think I am going to be able to bank on a huge salary even with a graduate degree. I'm goinf to school for children's policy research. It goes without saying that without a graduate degree I'm not going to be able to enter the field and with a degree I am not looking at a fat salary if I leave with just an MA or if I had a Ph.D. 10 years at a non-profit or government agency and your federal debt is forgiven. I'm also reading further on this, but I don't think the 10 years needs to be consecutive either. So, if I start at a non-profit for 5 years then move somewhere else my time counts towards the 10 years. Ideally, no one should be paying on loans for 25 years. However, having a safety net just in case is something that is nice given the horror stories I've heard with people who work at non-profits and have private debt. Ya, I was 19 and a first generation college student when I took a loan for 30K for a year of school. In retrospect I and my family should not have done it, but at that time we were all pretty uninformed and it all happened really fast. If I hit a financial hardship I'd prefer to not have my parents on the hook for that loan. i should also add there is nothing that prevents you from entering into IBR with a lower monthly payment, but making the standard 10 year payment. If times get tough you have a safety net. I'll look at it and think about it more. I appreciate everyone's feedback. As a first generation student the debt scares me every day. Granted grad school is paid for. I might need a couple extra thousand to supplement my stipend, but full tuition remission and a 19K stipend for 9 months makes breathing a bit easy. I was just wondering about creative things I could do with the stafford loans I am offered to help mitigate the private loan. Maybe there really isn't anything worth doing with that money in the end, and I can just send it back, but this dialogue helps. I do know that having large debt from undergrad has made me seriously contemplate bagging grad school after 2 years if I can get a job that pays well, but also fulfills a lot of what would keep me interested in a job on a day to day basis. I want the Ph.D., but all those lost earnings with the debt compounding I feel like might make that thought something that can't be realized.

I should also mention my family is cosigned on the private loan and I'm just no comfortable with that.

I hear what rising star is saying in terms of what accrues interest and when and how that occurs. On the surface it does not make sense. What my massive private loan doesn't qualify for is income-based repayment (IBR) or loan forgiveness for public service. Federal debt comes with those terms and IBR is something that I think is huge for someone who might realistically end up as a researcher at a non-profit or in a slow job recovery. What federal student loans are eligible to be repaid under an IBR plan? All Stafford, PLUS and Consolidation Loans made under either the Direct Loan or FFEL Program are eligible for repayment under IBR, EXCEPT loans that are currently in default, parent PLUS Loans (PLUS Loans that were made to parent borrowers), or Consolidation Loans that repaid parent PLUS Loans. The loans can be new or old, and for any type of education (undergraduate, graduate, professional, job training). What are the benefits of IBR? PAY AS YOU EARN — Under IBR, your monthly payment amount will be less than the amount you would be required to pay under a 10-year standard repayment plan, and may be less than under other repayment plans. Although lower monthly payments may be of great benefit to a borrower, these lower payments may result in a longer repayment period and additional accrued interest.INTEREST PAYMENT BENEFIT — If your monthly IBR payment amount does not cover the interest that accrues on your loans each month, the government will pay your unpaid accrued interest on your Subsidized Stafford Loans (either Direct Loan or FFEL) for up to three consecutive years from the date you began repaying your loans under IBR.25-YEAR CANCELLATION — If you repay under the IBR plan for 25 years and meet certain other requirements, any remaining balance will be canceled.10-YEAR PUBLIC SERVICE LOAN FORGIVENESS — If you work in public service, on-time, full monthly payments you make under IBR (or certain other repayment plans) while employed full-time in a public service job will count toward the 120 monthly payments that are required to receive loan forgiveness through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. Through this program, you may be eligible to have the remaining balance of your Direct Loans forgiven after you have made the 120 qualifying as described above. The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program is available only for Direct Loans. If you have FFEL loans, you may be eligible to consolidate them into the Direct Loan Program to take advantage of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. However, only the on-time, full monthly payments made under IBR or certain other repayment plans while you are a Direct Loan borrower will count toward the required 120 monthly payments. For more information about this program, review the Department’s Public Table here: http://studentaid.ed.gov/PORTALSWebApp/students/english/IBRPlan.jsp

I hear that. My conundrum is if I leave grad school after 2 years with an MA I wouldn't have the private loan paid off. I know it is illogical but I feel like trading private terms for government terms would buy me a lot of piece of mind if I left grad school after 2 years. I'm weird, right?

I know ahead of time we are all going to sit down and plan a lab meeting day that works for our schedule. Should I at least say, "Look, I'm not around all day Sunday or Monday morning for personal stuff?" I'm not trying to be caustic and I am definitely hearing you out, but also the grad student I spoke with when I was thinking of balancing keeping an internship said that the advisor likes to know up front what is up, that the advisor cares about your life to a degree and would prefer not to be surprised if suddenly you are being asked to do things on a Sunday and start saying no. I guess lab prescience has been lab members don't care to work on the week and don't mind working a Sunday every week, even though this isn't in the agreement I have with advisor, to get their 20 hours in. I'm just thinking out loud and appreciate the feedback.

I think the exact situation of RA funding will vary from lab to lab. I do know I think it is a dick move for an advisor to say you are paid for 20 hours and expect you to work more than that. I realize sometimes things come up and there needs to be a give and take, but if you are just getting paid for X hours it shouldn't mean infinite availability. However, I think you are on their terms a bit with how those hours are accounted for. I see how your situation is kind of similar to mine in that you want to get a feel for your personal time and how to balance another endeavor, but it is generally frowned upon to work a second job while an RA, at least as I have heard here over the last year. So, I wouldn't tell them you want to get a second job per-say.

I'll be frank about my financial situation. My stipend is 19K for 9 months and going to make for meager living in pricey area I am going to school. I'm setting a budget and hopefully it works. If I can save some money from my stipend I think that is great, but I doubt very highly that will be the case. Even with tuition waived I still think the cost of books and fees could add up to near 2K a year or more. I plan on taking all my alloted Stafford loans. Again,my tuition is waived so I don't need them, but I have a 35K private loan from undergrad that I am going to pay down with the Stafford loans. I have great credit and the interest rate on my private loan is lower (3%), but there is no flexibility in terms of payback, and I also used a great deal of my forbearance taking a year off between grad school. At least with federal debt I am eligible for income-based repayment and loan forgiveness in occupations that I might be involved with. The payback with private loans is relentless, and the general consensus seems to be that federal debt is much better than private debt and I want flexibility with repayment. Maybe this irrational? If so, I'm open to that and would like to hear why.

Normally I'd say your personal life is none of your advisor's business. However, part of my 20 hour/week RAship is going to require me working on Saturdays. I plan on maintaining a relationship with my significant other at a distance. We've done this before at 2.5 hours away and managed to see each other once a week. The college I'll be attending in Virginia is 90-100 minutes away from my SO. The fact that I need to work most Saturday mornings and afternoons means I'll be planning my 2 weeks I travel to see my SO around these data sessions. I'd like to just be upfront with my advisor when we meet at some point soon and say, "Here is a situation I am going to be working through so you know where I go Saturday evening into Monday late afternoon." I think telling the person upfront comes off more respectable than saying no you can't do something later down the line. I respect this is a situation I am signing up for, but I also can fulfill much of my RA hours during the course of the week and would like to have a better picture of, "If I put in X hours in the lab during the week can I finish my weekly hours Saturday mornings instead of afternoons, etc." I also think knowing the exact capacity in which I will be involved on this particular project will help me understand how I can plan ahead to have longer weekends if there is no class on a Monday, etc. Is it in appropriate to bring this up in a meeting, or just at the very least let it be known that it is a circumstance you are going to be dealing with for at least the first year? Again, if I wasn't working for a bit on Saturday I'd just leave Friday and do my thing and no one would need to know. I was also curious about keeping a weekend internship I have and broached that issue with a senior lab member figuring the answer would kind of help with this decision too, and I wouldn't really need to bring this situation up exactly. I also figured I could get a better feel for some weekend work since other lab members alluded to the fact that on some weekends they weren't there. The response was useful and I got the impression that my new advisor does care, but expects you to work hard, and would rather know upfront if some days are off limits. I'm a little worried that even asking a lab member about weekend work makes it look like I don't want to, but I am sure that is irrational on my end, and at some point someone was going to have to answer some questions. Anyways, I know this is random but what are your thoughts? Thanks