It’s been a bit quiet here because I haven’t really been doing anything active regarding grad school, except obsessively refreshing the student access portal at CU Denver to see how much financial aid they would award me.
My cousin, who works in graduate financial aid at a different university told me that she wouldn’t be surprised if I was awarded “the whole amount,” which for grad student is apparently $22,000 plus. (This is apparently very common at the graduate level.)
Well, it turns out my cousin was right (no surprise there). I was awarded a Federal Unsubsidized Loan of $20,500 and a Federal Grad PLUS loan of $1,923, which comes to a total of $22,423. This is far more than I need, almost for the entire program that I’m pursuing, never mind the first year.
So, the question is, how much do I accept? The way I see it, I have two options:
1. I could take enough student loan money for to completely cover the first semester, plus books, which would give me more time to save money for the rest of the semesters in my 529 account.
2. I could use what savings I have now to pay for what I can pay for, and pay for the rest with student loans. Rinse and repeat for all following semesters.
Right now I’m leaning toward option 2, but I have to run the actual numbers.
As a completely random aside, I wonder if CU Denver has a gym that’s free to students. Hmm…
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