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| graduate plus loan Realistic Advice |
graduate plus loan Realistic Advice
If you have found yourself thinking about grad school, you are aware of the major differences between considering going back to school and the decision you made several years back to go to college for the first time. For starters, by now you're a little older, with more responsibilities. You know what college can cost, and you probably don't have parents and teachers guiding you every step of the way. It might all seem a bit daunting, but if you take it one piece at a time, actually paying for grad school can be easier than you think. So let's take it step by step.
There is an old phrase that says "don't ever pay for grad school," and for a very academic program like cinema studies this is even more appropriate. What this indicates is that you can often get a large amount of your tuition compensated by working with the university you are at. This means that you will often engage in research, teach courses, assist tenured professors, or do other critical functions that will give them a reason to absolve you of some of your Tution costs or even a full tuition compensation. This is less common in Master's of Fine Arts programs in film because you need to be working on practical production, but in an academic program for cinema studies you will find that the default is going to be doing some form of institutional work. Try to find colleges that have the highest rate of tuition compensation, and it would also be advisable to take a look at the strength of their Graduate Teach Fellowship contracts and unions.
The first thing that needs to be acknowledged is that there is not going to be federal grant money for graduate school in cinema studies. FASFA is used to get both grants and loans for undergraduate students, but outside of fields like education and medicine there will be no federal grant money for graduate school. There is also going to be a federal loan limit of $20,500 per year for your education, which very well may not meet even your tuition needs. To fill the gap you may have to institute a Graduate Plus Loan, which will have a much higher interest rate. If you are going to find grants or scholarships you are going to have to go to completely different locations, but your federal loan money is still going to play an important role.