No News on Financial Aid Until July?

[Russophile]

I have only been accepted to one school for my MA, but because it is a FLAS renewal year, my school will not know until July what kind of funding they will be able to offer me, if they are able to offer anything at all. What kind of risk would I be taking by accepting their offer of admission? I cannot afford to go without some sort of assistance. I have significant undergraduate debt and am nearly certain I would be unable to secure a PLUS loan. I know I have until April 15 to make this decision, but just in case...

[so47]

Personally, I would not accept it. I know I would not be able to go somewhere without funding or being eligible for a loan, and I would be scared of them not letting you know until July since it's possible they may ask you to start paying tuition, or at least deposits, before then. I think you need to expect the worst case scenario, i.e. you don't get funding, and figure out what you would do. If the answer is it's not possible, than I would not accept the offer. Accepting the offer is a binding contract, and you may have either a hard time getting out of it, or may lose deposit money or something like that.

This all said, I also am not an expert, I applied to PhD programs and don't know how the funding situation works with MA programs. But make a realistic list of your options, and decide what makes the most sense.

[rising_star]

Russophile,

Is that the only program you've been accepted to? If so, I'd say go ahead and accept, but let them know you may have to defer if there is no funding available.

Also, as a grad student, your first source of loans would be Federal Stafford loans, with PLUS loans after you've gotten the $20.5K of Stafford loans. And, depending on your financial needs, you may be eligible for Perkins loans, which have a lower interest rate than Stafford loans.

[johntravis667]

I received FLAS Fellowships at two schools, both UNC Chapel Hill and Ohio State. Both of them had that same problem, which was part of the reason I choose to pass on each of them. The program I choose cost me money, but it was where I really wanted to go anyway. Had the funding been 100% guaranteed I might have considered one of those programs just because of the lack of future debt.

Good luck on your decision.

[kandeya]

I was nominated for a FLAS--and I heard that the federal government would finalize funding for the universities in June, so I'd find out my final status then. I got no other funding from the department as of now, so I went ahead and accepted the offer, making it very clear that I would have to defer/withdraw if I couldn't get funding because I didn't want to go into debt. They seemed to be okay with that, so I hope your department will be as accomodating. My school didn't require me to put down a deposit or anything like that to reserve my place, so I won't be taking any financial risks, as far as I know. It's going to be a long wait, but hopefully it'll be worth it!