How to Finance Your Graduate Education at Stockton

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. We'll give everyone just a moment to test their speakers and make sure that you can hear us all well and we'll dive right in. But we're so happy that you're joining us if you're watching this virtually as a recording. Thank you so much for joining as well. If you're joining us live again, we'll give you a minute to test your speakers and make sure everything is working well.

Alright.

OK, it looks like everyone is in, so we'll go ahead and get started. So welcome everyone. My name is Jen Radwanski and I'm the Associate Director for Graduate Admissions here at Stockton University and we are happy that you're joining us again. If you're joining us live or you're watching this pre recorded, we appreciate you taking the time to learn more about financing your graduate education here at Stockton University. I am joined by one of our financial aid experts.

Maria Lena, who is here to share a wealth of knowledge for all of you.

As far as how to financial graduate education, Graduate School is not cheap and we understand that. And we want to figure out a way to share with you as many opportunities as we can to help you with that process, to take some of that burden off to make Graduate School more accessible to you and attending Stockton more accessible to you for your graduate education. So with that being said, I want to just share one housekeeping item. For those of you who are joining us live, there's a chat feature on the right hand side of your screen.

If you have questions, please feel free to ask them. We'll take questions at the end and we would encourage you to actually maybe wait and put your questions in the chat at the end 'cause we might actually cover them during the course of the presentation, but if we don't, we'll take those questions live at the end. If you are joining us via recording, we will also give you give you our contact information to contact us with further questions as well. So without further ado, Mariano, I'm going to turn things over to you.

Thanks so much, Jen. Thank you so much everybody that is joining us today, whether you're here live with us or watching this recording. Thank you so much for being here. As Jen mentioned, this presentation is going to go over everything in relation to financing your graduate education. There's kind of a stigma around financial aid and and Graduate School that there's no type of aid available. There are of course not as as many well known opportunities, but there are definitely opportunities that we want to make sure that you're aware of that can really help.

Kind of take away some of that burden of any loan debt or anything like that, kind of ease your mind into going into grad school. So that's kind of the goal of this presentation is just to kind of go over all of the different aid opportunities available to graduate students and how to apply for aid and all that good stuff. Before we do get started, I just want to introduce myself. My name is Marie Elena Dattoli. I'm Assistant Director of Financial Aid here at Stockton. I'm also a two time Stockton alum. I graduated with my Bachelor's in 2018 and then my Master of Arts and Instructional Technology in 2021.

Shout out to anybody considering the Master of Arts Instructional Technology program.

All right. So before I get started, I do just like to go over the basics of what exactly we're talking about today, just to kind of break it down because the whole financial aid process can seem a little bit overwhelming. So I find that if I break it down a little bit, it's a little bit easier to understand. So the first thing I'm going to go over is understanding the sources and the types of financial aid. So that's where your aid comes from and what types of aid are available. Then applying for aid, how to actually apply for that, determining your costs and then understanding your aid offer and filling any gap that there might be.

So the first thing we're going to cover is understanding the sources of financial aid. So the sources of financial aid, that's where your financial aid comes from. These include the federal and state governments, the university and private entities. And they offer two different types of financial aid. So they're going to offer Gift Aid, everybody's favorite, of course, grants and scholarships, That's free money. That doesn't have to be paid back. There are some Gift Aid opportunities at the graduate level, which is kind of not exactly well known. I feel a lot of students think, oh, the only thing that's available is loans. So that's not necessarily true.

So I'm going to go over some of those opportunities in a few moments.

The other type of aid though is self help aid. So of course those are going to be your loan options, borrowed money that must be repaid with interest and then employment opportunities so working and earning a paycheck.

All right. Just to breakdown into some specifics for the different types of graduate financial aid, So federal aid that's offered for graduate students is that Federal Direct Unsubsidized Loan and the Federal Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education or the TEACH grant. And I am going to get into specifics of what exactly all of these are, but I just kind of wanted to give you an overview first. So State aid, we have the Educational Opportunity Fund grant for graduate students.

And then aid from the university, so from Stockton, we offer graduate assistantships, graduate coordinator positions, scholarships for new graduate students and then foundation scholarships for returning students. And then private aid would be private scholarships, private loans, tuition reimbursement, those types of things that we'll get into.

So first we're going to talk about Stockton scholarships. So the new graduate student scholarship is for new incoming graduate students. Everybody is automatically considered when they're applying to Stockton for either the fall or the spring semesters. It is A1 semester award $2500 and that will apply to your first semester at Stockton. If you want to learn more, you can go to stockton.edu/grad, but do just remember that you are automatically considered for this scholarship when you apply. Next, We have foundation scholarships, so Stockton University University Foundation maintains.

A merit based award program comprised of approximately 200 scholarships.

That's undergraduate and graduate scholarships as well. So to apply, students must already have an established Stockton GPA. So if you are going to be coming in this spring, so spring of 24, then you would have to wait until next spring, so January of 25 to apply for foundation scholarships. If you are going to be in the future, then of course you would, you know you would do the same thing and you have to have AGPA already a stock from GPA.

Award amounts vary from $100 to $2500 per opportunity, and you can receive more than one.

A 3.0 GPA is is typically where we're looking for, but not GPA is. GPA is not the only thing that is considered.

Applications are typically, as I mentioned, opened in January or February.

OK. So where you should be with financial aid right now at this point, even if you are not going to be coming into Stockton until next year or at some point in the future, you can create what's called an FSAID. This is your federal student aid ID. That's what you use to file the FAFSA. So you can actually do that now if you don't have one already. If you're coming in for the spring, your FAFSA is actually available. So you should be creating your FSA ID if you don't have one already and then?

You're going to complete that 2324 FAFSA, so something new that I did want to mention. So graduate students are automatically considered independent students for financial aid purposes. So parent information is actually not required on the FAFSA, which is different from undergraduate students. Being a graduate student in itself makes you considered independent, So if you are married, your spouse's information will of course have to be added to the FAFSA. So something new that's coming in December is that spouses without Social Security numbers will be able to create FSAIDS. So if anybody's spouse does not have a social.

They will actually be able to now create an FSA ID and use that to log in and complete their section of the FAFSA. There are some changes coming to the FAFSA, which I'll get into in a moment, that will make the spouse actually have to contribute to the FAFSA this year.

The next steps are going to of course be to complete the FAFSA which is your free application for Federal Student Aid. That's the application completed by U.S. citizens and eligible non citizens each year to determine their eligibility for any federal, state and institutional aid programs. So the FAFSA is typically been available each October one. However, if you go to fafsa.gov, currently the 2425 FAFSA which wouldn't have been available October one is not available yet. So when you're looking at the FAFSA and you're deciding which FAFSA you're gonna complete.

If you're going to school in the fall of 23, spring of 24, you would complete the 2324 FAFSA.

If you're going to school within the fall of 24, spring of 25, you would complete the 2425 FAFSA. So that's just a good way to look at it. But it of course is not available yet for next year. So if you're coming in for spring, you can go ahead and do your FAFSA. If you're coming in for fall or next spring, then you're going to have to wait. The reason for that is something called FAFSA simplification. So currently the US Department of Education is in the process of implementing a major overhaul of all of the processes and systems used to offer federal student aid starting with the 2425 eight-year. The goal of this is really to expand eligibility for federal student aid and to create a more streamlined.

Application process and just a better user experience for students filling out the FAFSA. But of course that means that there are a lot of changes coming. Majority of these changes are not necessarily going to impact graduate students. There will be small changes, but mostly changes to eligibility are impacting undergraduate students. So as I mentioned, the FAFSA is not available yet. By law it has to be released by January 1 of 2024. So it should at some point be released this December.

My bet is on December 31st at 11:59 PM, but we will see as of course obviously been delayed quite a bit. So it's not ready yet.

So that's just my guess there. Just wanted to go over a few of the changes that are coming to the FAFSA that everyone can really expect to see. So there gonna be fewer questions used to determine a student's aid eligibility. The number of students in the household in college will no longer be used in the formula to determine aid eligibility, and household size is actually gonna be pulled from the student. And the spouse's tax returns can be manually updated if it's not exactly the same number as however many people are claimed on that student and their spouse's tax return. And when I say and spouse, it's if you do have a spouse. If you don't, then you don't worry about it.

The Student Aid Index will replace the EFC. So the EFC was your expected Family contribution. I'm super excited about this change because your expected family contribution was never what you were expected to contribute towards your education. It was just a number to determine some aid eligibility. So now they're changing that to the Student Aid Index.

And that is basically almost the same thing as the EFC. It's an indexing number used to determine aid eligibility. So it's kind of used on the back end. Schools use that number to determine what you're eligible for. Students don't really need to be too concerned.

But just note that a lower SI generally increases eligibility for need based financial aid. So I'll get into some of those that graduate students could be eligible for in a few moments. Another thing we're super excited about is the IRS data retrieval tool is going away. Anybody that's used that before understands that it can sometimes be a frustrating process.

In order to use the tool, students and family members would actually have to enter their address, filing status, all of that which you would think would be simple.

But the IRS sometimes misspells things, abbreviates addresses, and we don't know what they've done, so it's kind of hard to guess sometimes.

What they've used and then all that. So the direct data exchange will directly import tax information into the FAFSA from the IRS after the student and the spouse can send to that exchange. So there's not any address input or anything like that. It's just going to be clicking a button that says I can send to have this information transferred into my FAFSA.

And then it will be directly transferred. So super easy.

OK, a couple additional changes. There's a ton, but just a few additional changes. Students and their spouse will now need to consent to have their information transferred into the FAFSA directly from the IRS. Without this consent, students will not be eligible for federal student aid or receive an Sai. This includes that graduate unsubsidized loan. Something else, Students and their spouse will complete their sections of the FAFSA separately. So this is only in certain cases.

Independent students are going to add their spouses as contributors to their FAFSA if they did not file a joint tax return.

So within the year, whatever year the FAFSA is asking for, the 2425 FAFSA will ask for 2022 income information. If you and your spouse did not file a joint tax return that year, you weren't married yet that year, then you will have to add your spouse as a contributor and then they are going to have to complete their own sections of the FAFSA separately. If you did file jointly, then the IRS is just going to pull your information in separately. Also, if you didn't file, if your spouse didn't file, you're going to have to add them as a contributor as well.

OK. And just some things that you may need to complete the 2425 FAFSA. You may or may not need these things, but it's always good to have them on hand. Your 2022 ten 40s for the student and spouse if applicable, 2022 W twos and 1090 nines, records of child support received, current balances of cash savings and checking accounts and the net worth of investments, businesses and farms. All good things to just have on hand. Some of these things you're going to have to manually input your balances of your cash savings and checking net worth of.

Investments, businesses and farms.

Any records of child support received? All of that. Anything that's not reported on your tax return? Really, you know you're going to have to manually input, but if you did file a tax return, then you shouldn't have to do too much manual entry.

All right. So now that we've talked about how to actually apply for financial aid, you have to file the FAFSA. Of course, we're going to go over what types of aids you could be eligible for after filing the FAFSA. So eligible students can borrow directly from the US Department of Education at $20,500 federal direct unsubsidized loan. That's a loan per year, so it's $10,250 a semester. You may be eligible for a grant on sub loan if you're enrolled in a degree seeking program. So anybody that's pursuing a certificate is not eligible for federal student aid. You have to be in a degree seeking program.

And be enrolled in at least 5 credits per semester at Stockton. That does decrease to 3 credits in the summer for graduate students to be considered half time, but it's 5 credits per semester. And then subsidized loan is not awarded on the basis of any type of need. So pretty much everybody is eligible. As long as you're not at any loan limit, you will be charged interest. So the interest for the 2324 academic year was 5.5%. That's pretty low in comparison to other types of education loans.

So just something to think about. And the interest will accrue from the time the loan is dispersed until it's paid in full.

And you of course have to file your FAFSA to be considered for this type this type of loan.

All right, Something else I just want to mention for anybody thinking of pursuing a Master of Arts in Education, the Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education or the TEACH Grant provides grants to students who are of course enrolled in that Master of Arts and Education program and intend to teach full time in high need subject areas for at least four years at schools that serve students from low income families. So there is a list on Federal Student AIDS website of schools that qualify for or qualify as.

Schools that serve low income families.

And the high needs subject areas are listed on there as well. So if you already teach it at a school that it's defined as such, and you teach in a subject area, same thing, then you could qualify for this. Or if you intend to. So if eventually you know you decide that you're going to do that, you could also qualify for this to apply. Applicants of course have to complete a FAFSA each year. You also must complete the teach grant counseling and a teach agreement to serve each year on studentaid.gov So that agreement to serve it is the requirement that.

Whether or not you intend to teach to teach at one of these, you you do have to have to. So if you received this grant, you have to teach a high need subject area.

For at least four years at a school that serves low income families. So that is something something to know. If any student does not complete, therefore your teaching obligation, then the grant would be converted to an unsubsidized loan and it must be repaid with interest. But this is a great program for anybody considering the MAD program.

It's it's free money, which is of course our favorite kind. So just something to look into.

OK, stated eligibility. There's limited stated eligibility for students, but after filing the FAFSA, he so will get a copy of your FAFSA. So if you're a New Jersey resident who attended or who is attending a New Jersey university. So if you were attending Stockton and you received the educational opportunity funding as an undergraduate student, you could potentially receive EOF funding as a graduate student as well. So you can view any eligibility or submit any additional documents requested by the state on njfans.hesaid.org.

I do just want to mention before I get off of this slide that New Jersey Dreamer students are not going to file a FAFSA. So if you're New Jersey Dreamer and you received EOF as an undergrad, you could potentially receive it as a graduate student. You would have to complete the New Jersey Alternative Application adhesive.org in order to be considered for that. Some of you might be asking what is EOF? If you were a part of EOF, you would definitely know what it is. At Stockton, we call it an extension of family. It's a really tight knit group and the program itself ensures meaningful access to higher Ed for those from backgrounds of economic and educational disadvantage.

At UF, students receive counseling, financial, and other support services to ensure success at Stockton. So like I said, there's limited EOF funding available for graduate students. But it is there and I have seen many students receive it. So anyone interested can contact the OF office at EOF Galloway at stockton.edu. You can also easily get to their contact information by just searching EUF at stockton.edu.

Another opportunity I wanted to mention are graduate assistantships. Excuse me. So graduate assistantships are degree seeking. Graduate students can apply for assistantships to help cover some of the costs of their education. So they're granted in the form of a tuition waiver. So it would basically cut a portion of the cost of your tuition. It would waive the cost of it so you wouldn't have to pay for it. They can vary from one credit waiver to the maximum tuition charge per semester. So it really depends on the work that you're doing and and what the program is allowing.

To apply, you're going to submit the application form, which is available at stockton.edu/grad or through your program chair, and a letter of interest to graduate admissions in enwing 007 the later than October 31st for the spring semester. So that has passed if you are looking into attending this spring and March 31st for fall semester, so there's still time for that. Of course, individual programs may have other requirements, so you want to consult with your program chair when applying, but for graduate assistantship specifically.

A lot of these are going to be kind of assistant teaching positions. Some of them could be helping with initiatives or different programming within graduate admissions or or something like that. So you're you're working for tuition waivers basically.

Graduate coordinators kind of similar but a little bit different. So degree seeking Stockton University graduate students can apply to become graduate coordinators during their time as a graduate student. Several departments on campus higher graduate coordinators to assist within their offices as as a worker if you would, with events, initiatives and other types of things as well. So job duties and compensation vary based on the officer position. Of course some may offer a paycheck, they could provide housing, free housing and things like that. So to view a list of openings and apply you would just search graduate.coordinatoropportunities@stockton.edu.

OK. So now that you've applied and you understand the different types of aid that are available, what's next? So of course that's determining your costs. So the cost of attendance, also referred to as the COA has two different components. The direct costs are things like that we're going to bill you for. So things like tuition and fees and then housing and food. So you can think of direct costs kind of as your bill, if you would.

Indirect costs or indirect expenses include things like books and supplies, transportation.

Miscellaneous personal expenses, different things like that that we're not going to actually bill you for. So when you look at your entire cost of attendance, it might seem a lot larger than what you originally anticipated. Maybe you've seen direct cost before. You've seen an estimate of of a bill for whatever program that you are considering. And you're thinking, Oh my goodness, the cost of attendance is so much higher than I thought.

If you take away those direct costs and you only or excuse me, indirect costs, and you only look at those direct costs, you're getting a more accurate representation of what your bill could look like.

Indirect costs are included to kind of give you an understanding that, you know it's going to cost more than just what tuition and fees. And if you're going to live on campus, housing and food are going to cost and direct costs. You know, if you're driving to campus every day, it's going to cost you gas and wear and tear on your car and things like that. So just things to consider, books, stuff like that. So please, if you see the cost of attendance, don't freak out if it's so much larger than you thought it was going to be, just look at those direct costs.

All right, your next steps after you determine what your costs are of course going to be viewing your financial aid offer notification. So once you file your FAFSA, which like I said, it's not available yet for Fall 24, Spring of 25, but once you file your FAFSA some point after that, you're going to receive an 8 offer.

That aid offer is going to list your direct costs, like I mentioned, tuition and fees and if you are going to live on campus, housing and food. And then it's going to list indirect expenses. So books, course material, supplies, equipment, transportation, all that good stuff.

And then you'll see your total estimated cost of attendance there. Then we will show you whatever.

One second.

My apologies. My.

There we go. My apologies, my screen was not switching.

OK. So then we will show you any aid that you're eligible for. I think there was a little delay there. OK, let's go back to here.

My apologies everybody. Just bear with me one moment.

OK. I think we should be good. OK. So we will show you within that eight offer any types of aid that you are eligible for. So of course that graduate unsubsidized loan and then any other aid opportunities that are available to you as well.

Your next steps are going to be accepting that eight offer. So if of course you can pay your full tuition and fees out of pocket, then absolutely do so. Any you know we that you're offered that unsubsidized loan as as a resource to you, but any anything that you can pay towards your education now is really going to save you money in the long run. So if you can pay whatever now, then go ahead and do that. But if you do need to accept either a portion or all of the loan that you're offered.

Then you're going to go ahead and do that.

Once you determine your costs and you see that eight offer, so you can do that right within your aid offer, you'll just go to the bottom and it'll say what is my next step And then you click accept my aid offer. That's going to take you to your ghost doctrine portal and within the portal you're going to go to the left hand side and click view your financial aid offer. Now you'll put in the eight-year and then you're actually going to see the loan listed. And then next to the loan you will click on accept either partial amount or Accept the full amount. If you're accepting A partial amount, you'll put that amount in. Remember that it is for the entire year, so if you wanted.

2000A semester. Don't just put 2000 because it'll break it down into fall and spring. So then it would be 4000 total that you would put in. That's just an example. Once you hit submit my decision, then you're gonna complete your loan requirements at studentaid.gov So entrance counseling and a master promissory note. Even if you did those as an undergraduate student, you're gonna have to do them again as a graduate student.

Alright. And the next closing the gap. So to illustrate what the gap is, I've I have a little graphic here. So you have your direct costs and your indirect costs, your financial aid and then the gap, right. So the gap is the difference between.

Whatever your costs are and what your aid doesn't cover, right, So it's that that in between.

Right. So in your financial aid offer, we go over a few different ways that you can consider covering that gap. The 1st is external scholarship opportunities. So I'm super passionate about scholarships because a lot of people don't apply for them. There are so many scholarships that that go where you know.

If it's for just Stockton students, say you know 1/4 of the students apply for them and it should really be everybody applying, right? Scholarships are really everywhere and and there's so many out there. So where can you find scholarships? So local organizations. The student on the left photo in the photo there received a laptop from his local Rotary Club, so he applied for a scholarship with them and received that. So that reduced that indirect expense scholarship search site. So for example, fast web is a good one.

There are search sites that you can go out there and search anything that you're interested in.

Your your heritage. If you speak different languages, really anything. And that's what I mean when I say scholarships are everywhere and they're really for anything. So any of your interests, your background, anything like that, search for for things like that and it'll narrow down what scholarships you could be eligible for based on those types of things.

So definitely check out any scholarship search sites, especially Fast web, that you can find. Just note, if they're ever asking for things like your social or if they're asking you to pay to apply, those are red flags. You never want to give out your your Social Security number and you never want to pay to have to apply for something like this. They are offering a scholarship, they're offering, you know, free money out to students. They're not going to make you apply. So just some red flags to consider.

Then your employers as well. So employers could potentially offer either tuition reimbursement, tuition waivers, things like that. I'll get into those in a minute or scholarships though. So the student on the right here work for Chick-fil-A and she applied for a scholarship with them and received $20,000 to help with the cost of her education. Not every employer is of course as generous, but there are definitely opportunities out there. So definitely check with your employers to see if they offer anything like that. And then as I mentioned earlier, Stockton.

Graduate student scholarship and then foundation scholarships.

Something noteworthy as well. So if you are a Stockton employee, we offer tuition waivers for students. So Stockton will waive the cost of tuition for eligible employees. You want to contact HR to learn more. So you would be responsible for any fees associated with your program, but the cost of tuition could be waived. And then any outside employers could potentially offer tuition reimbursement. So employee tuition reimbursement is basically you go to school and you take your class and you pay for your class out of pocket and then your employer, once they see whatever your final grade is, they might require you to get a certain grade.

They will reimburse you all or some of the money that you put into the class. So you're of course going to want to contact your HR office For more information, but that is definitely something noteworthy to consider.

All right. Next, of course, loan options, not everybody's favorite. Something else I'm super passionate about. I did my graduate capstone on financial literacy and borrowing. So I'm super, super passionate about loans and then making sure that students understand borrowing, understand that most students do have to borrow or take out loans to help cover the cost of their education. So we did talk about that unsub loan. Typically if you can find a loan that's, you know, a private loan that has an interest that's that's less than you would want to go with that you want to go with the lowest interest rate.

Typically those federal direct unsubsidized loans are going to have that lowest rate though, so feel free to explore different loan options, but at the end of the day, that one might be the best option for you. If that's not enough, then you might want to consider private education loans or the graduate direct PLUS loan from the federal government. So there's different options available to graduate students to be able to borrow. Just note that the unsub loans, you don't need a cosigner, there's no credit check or anything like that.

The main thing with borrowing is, is not to be afraid, but rather to be informed and responsible with it. So understand interest rates, you know obviously the lower the rate the better off you are. But then again, if a lender is offering you a really great rate with terms that aren't right for you and when I say that, you know they might want you to repay the loan right away or or things like that. And that's not always feasible for everybody. So just things to think about there. But definitely keep in mind the lowest rate for you is going to be the best option.

As long as the terms are right for you. So understanding these rates and repayment and not over borrowing as well, we see a lot of students that try to over borrow, the cost of attendance is in place to help kind of block some of that because you can't receive aid that is more than your cost of attendance. And of course if you need to borrow for things like housing and food and your books and all those things, you absolutely can. But you really want to limit your borrowing to exactly what you need and not over borrowing because you're paying to borrow that money. So you're not only borrowing.

You know, the principal amount, the amount that you're asking for, but you're paying to borrow that. So you're going to end up, you know, paying back a lot more in the future.

And finally, payment plan options. So Stockton does offer payment plans per semester, so we do bill per semester.

And what we do is we can split up payments into as many as five per semester. So say your bill is $5000, so it'd be $1000 a month for five months. If you know you can afford something like that, you can borrow a loan and then make payments out of pocket like that. So if you if your bill's 5000 and you can only afford 2000 throughout the semester.

And what you'll end up doing is you'll borrow 3 and a loan, and then you'll make the payments up to the 2000. So you can kind of customize this however you want. And that's kind of what I mean by responsible borrowing as well. So if you know that you can make payments, you're going to save yourself money now because you're not paying to borrow your own money, right? You're not borrowing that money. So just something else to think about as well.

Right. And then lastly, if you would like, you can follow us at Stockton Finade on Facebook, Instagram and ex formerly Twitter. We do tweet scholarship opportunities and we really just put a lot of good helpful information on our social media.

We don't really care about the number of likes our posts get and things like that. We just want to be able to reach students and and make sure that.

You know, they have the opportunity to learn and to educate themselves on what's going on within the financial aid world and the application process and any new updates. So if you'd like, you can go ahead and give us a follow there.

And then I'm just going to leave this up here, some helpful resources for federal student aid, state aid and then Stockton's financial aid office as well. So we are always here. If you have any questions at all throughout the entire financial aid process, you can always give us a call. You can e-mail us if you go to stockton.edu/finite and then go to our contact page, you'll be able to schedule a phone appointment. So there are many ways to get in touch with us. We're also in the office, so you can come visit us when you're visiting campus. So just something I wanted to mention that we are always here for you.

And if you haven't, be sure to apply.

Thank you guys so much for listening.

Awesome.

Thank you so, so much. That information was all really, really helpful and I hope that you all were able to take some tidbits from that and take some notes. We do have a couple questions already in the chat, so I'm going to go ahead and ask for your assistance in some of these as we dive in. If you have other questions, please feel free to add them in and we'll get started with the ones that we have. So we have. Once a student said, if I'm still in my undergraduate doing dual degree, nothing changes, right? Regarding me being a dependent of my parents. I think that's in regards to completing the FAFSA.

Yeah, so nothing should change as long as you're enrolled in at least one undergraduate class and you're still considered an undergraduate student for financial aid purposes.

If if anything changes, like financially, we would reach out to you and let you know that you know you're now considered a graduate student and you would be offered graduate aid automatically.

Great. Another question, I know you talked a little bit about the opportunity for the payment plans, but are there any other special financing for teachers who work in districts that offer reimbursement?

Not specifically. Any payment plans are actually through the Bursar's office, but not specifically anything for reimbursement. So typically those you do pay out of pocket and then you're reimbursed after the semester is over when the employer sees, you know, your final grade.

So we had another really good question that says I can ask questions later in the office of financial aid, right? Absolutely.

Yes, absolutely.

We probably encourage that they are such a welcoming group of folks, so please feel free to do so. That would be wonderful.

Absolutely. And if you are on campus, our office is decorated for Christmas to the 9:00, so feel free to stop it.

Excellent, good. Well, I'm not seeing any additional questions in our chat. I think you've really done an extensive overview of all the opportunities. So I I thank you for that. But again if you're watching this pre recorded our contact information is there please reach out to both financial aid or graduate admissions. We're happy to help you. Again the financial aid team is just a wonderful group of people that really want to be there to support you.

And we're happy to share any additional information with you as they they share more with us, especially as it comes to fruition. And at the end of this month with the new FAFSA, we'll be sharing that with everyone too. So follow both of our accounts on social for updates, we'll be sharing that too. So again, thank you everyone for joining us. Maria Elena, thank you as always for being the expert in this field. You know, you almost make it sound fun financially being fun, right? And it really digestible, really making sure that the material is easy for all of us to understand. So thank you for doing that.

Thank you so much and thank you for everybody for joining us.

All right. Have a great day, everyone. Take care. Bye, bye.