How to Finance Your Graduate Education at Stockton

Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. We are going to give everyone just a second to get into our webinar. If you're joining us live, make sure your sound is working OK or excited you're joining us. If you're watching this prerecorded, thank you for taking the time to watch this again. We'll just give folks a second to log in.

Awesome. All right. It looks like everybody is in. So hello everyone. Thank you again for joining us for this presentation. My name is Jen Radwanski and I'm the associate director for graduate admissions here at Stockton University. And I am joined by my amazing colleague Maria Elena from from financial aid, who is the assistant director in financial aid. And we have a fantastic presentation for you to help, you know.

Organize your thoughts and information as it pertains to how you can finance your graduate education. And so without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to our expert who will be sharing more information. I do want to share with you all. We will have an opportunity for those who are joining us live to do Q&A. You can put your questions in the chat, but I will ask that you wait to put those questions in the chat towards the end because we may cover the question that that you're thinking of. So. So we'll wait till the end of the presentation.

To really answer all of those, we can drop it in there if you'd like and then if you are watching this prerecorded, we will have an opportunity for you to reach out to us.

Electronically and we will share our contact information and our very last slide on how you can reach out to us today to ask any additional questions. So without further ado, I'm going to turn things over.

Thanks so much, Jen. Hi, everybody. I'm super excited to be here today to go over some tips and and different ways that you can help to finance your graduate education. One thing I just want to start with is that I know that so many students think that there's not any funding available out there to help fund a graduate education. That's not the case. On the contrary, there are actually a few different ways that you might not have thought of.

Um, that you can use to help fund your grad education. So if that's something that might, you know, be deterring you from either applying or you're considering going to grad school, I'm hoping that today's presentation will be able to help change your mind, put you a little bit at ease, and kind of give you some tips and tricks of how to navigate the process. So, as Jen mentioned, my name is Maria Elena Dattoli. I'm assistant director of financial aid here at Stockton. I'm also at two times.

Walked in alarm. I graduated in 2018 with my bachelors and then in 2021 with my Masters. I was part of the Masters of Arts and Instructional Technology program here at Stockton.

OK. So just a quick overview of what we're talking about. We're going to go over on the sources of financial aid. So that's the types of financial aid that you could be eligible for, how to apply, determine your costs and then understanding what your financial aid offer is and filling any gap that there could be between what your offer is and what your costs may be.

OK, so the sources, the sources of financial aid include the federal and state governments, the university and private entities. So these sources offer two types of financial aid. These are Gift Aid and self-help aid. So Gift Aid, these are things like grants and scholarships. This is our favorite kind of money. It's free, doesn't need to be paid back and then self help aid. So these are loan options and employment opportunities. So these are loan options would be borrowed money that you have to repay.

Eventually with interest and then employment opportunities. These you would obviously you know work and earn either a paycheck. There are also some other opportunities for grad students that I'll go over. Might not be earning a paycheck exactly, but there are benefits to them.

OK, so the different types, so from the federal government, they do offer federal direct unsubsidized loans, which I will get into a little bit more. But I do want to mention a lot of students don't realize that loans are technically financial aid, especially the federal loans. You don't need a credit check for these loans, you don't need a cosigner for them. So they also come at a lower interest rate usually than most private loans. I won't say all but majority of them. So that is technically.

Financial lead, it's it's giving you an opportunity that you might not have had. You know, if you're trying to apply for a private loan or something like that. There's also the Federal teacher assistance for college and higher education that teach Grant that is for students pursuing a Master of Arts in Education.

Then there's state aid that it says limited at the grad level. But if you were part of the Educational Opportunity Fund EOF program as an undergrad, there is sometimes grad money available, and that's free money as well, right from the university. So we have graduate assistantships as well as scholarships. There's a new student graduate scholarship. And then when you are here at Stockton, we have foundation scholarships that you could apply for. And then there's also private aid. So we're talking private scholarships.

As well as private loans.

OK, so Stockton scholarships, I wanted to talk about these first. So we have our new graduate student scholarships. So at Stockton we reward your academic success. So new incoming graduate students are eligible to apply for scholarships for the fall and the spring semesters. This is a one time award. It's $2500 that would be applied to your first semester here at Stockton and then which I'm going to talk about in one second, we have the foundation scholarships which can kind of supplement that after. So after you have a Stockton.

GPA. You can go ahead and apply for your foundation scholarships.

To apply for that new student scholarship, you can visitstockton.edu/grad and there's information on there about how to apply for that.

And then once you're stuck in student and you have that GPA, you can apply for our foundation scholarships. This is a robust program that offers over 200 scholarships for undergrad and graduate students. To apply, you have to have a 3.0 or higher GPA and then they will look at you have to do an essay, your volunteerism, campus involvement, all of that is weighed in to determine your eligibility. Also, specific programs that you might be in might have a scholarship.

Designated for somebody in that program. It is one blanket application for all of those different scholarships though, and they range from $100 to $2500 per opportunity and you could receive more than one. They usually come out in late January, early February, and you can go to stockton.edu/foundation Dash scholarships to apply. Lots of information all over the place right now. The current campaign they're giving away over $1,000,000 in foundation scholarships.

Next academic year, so definitely an opportunity to take advantage of once you become a Stockton student and then the new graduate student scholarships before before you're entering.

OK, so if you are thinking about coming in as a fall 2023 student where you should be right now, you should have already created your FSA ID and completed the FAFSA. If you haven't, that's totally OK you still have plenty of time, but I am going to go over how you can, you know, start that process. So your FSA ID is your username and password. Of course, if you did the FAFSA when you were an undergraduate student, you may already have.

One of these, if you can't remember what it is, that's OK. It's pretty easy to reset. Um, you would go to fafsa.gov and then you can forgot username forgot password and kind of go from there. Once you have that all set up to file the FAFSA which is the free application for federal student aid. So that would be for that teach grant if you're pursuing the Master of Arts and Education as well as any federal direct loans.

Um, some things that you might need before you file, before you get started. Um, your Social Security #2021. Ten 40s for the student, and if you're married, your spouse as well. I want to point out 2021. So even though you're going to be doing the 2023-2024 FAFSA, so 2023 would be for fall, 232024 would be spring 24. You're going to use two years prior income information, so that's 2021. OK, so 2020.

The 10 forties, 2021 W twos for the student and the spouse if you're married. If not, then just the student. No parent information goes on because as a graduate student you are automatically considered independent. So only student and then if applicable, spouse information, drivers license, and then any Social Security, disability, veterans benefits that you may have received. All that information the past ask those types of questions. So you'll need all of that.

Once you're ready and have all of that available, you're going to go to FAFSA Gov and then you click log in. You'll sign in with your FSA ID and password and then complete each of the sections, student demographics, school selection. You want to make sure you add Stockton so that we do receive your FAFSA dependency status and then all of your financials. You can use the IRS data retrieval tool when utilizing the FAFSA or when when going in and logging into the FAFSA and completing it, you can utilize that tool that pulls a lot of your.

Information directly from the IRS so you don't have to worry about inputting it yourself, and then you're gonna go ahead and sign and submit, and then the school will receive it and we will send you a financial aid offer.

All right. So now that you've applied, we're going to talk about the teach grant. So this, like I said, is for students who enrolled in the Master of Arts and Education program and you intend to teach full time in a high need subject area for at least four years at schools that serve low income families. OK, there is a list online. They are very specific criteria, but there are a lot of schools, especially locally that meet this criteria. So a lot of students.

Could be eligible for this to apply. You of course have to complete your FAFSA each year.

And you'll have to complete teach grant counseling, and a teach agreement to serve. It's important to note that if so, this would be a grant. Of course, free money. But it's important to note that if you don't complete the four year teaching obligation, your grant would be converted into an unsubsidized loan and you must repay it with interest. But this is a great opportunity for anybody who wants to teach or is currently teaching. You may already currently be teaching in in a district or at a school that meets this criteria, so this is a great opportunity.

And to help fund some of your masters.

OK.

Now we're going to talk about state aid. So like I said, State aid is limited, but if a student was in the Educational Opportunity Fund program as an undergraduate student, you could potentially be eligible for EOF funding as a graduate student. So what you would do is you would log on to your NJ Fams account, which is NJ fans.hisa.org and then you would complete any items in the To Do List on that website and then we'll get into.

POF as well.

OK.

So EOF ensures meaningful access to higher Ed to those from backgrounds of economic and educational disadvantage. This is only available if you did have EOF as an undergrad. But if you did, and you are interested in pursuing a graduate degree, you can contact Doctor Brett Pulliam, who's the director of EOF here at Stockton and discuss your options for graduate funding.

OK. And now we're going to talk graduate assistantships. So graduate assistantships are a really neat opportunity that we have here at Stockton. So any degree seeking graduate student can apply for an internship or excuse me, an assistantship which is granted in the form of a tuition waiver. So this basically means that it would waive the cost of tuition for a certain designated number of credits. So it depends on how the assistantship is is worked out, but it can cover.

A certain amount of credits that you're enrolled in, um.

It's basically a lot of times you're helping a professor in a class, you're helping kind of be their assistant if you would, grading papers and helping teach and and things like that.

And these grad assistants are rewarded with their some of their tuition waived based on the number of credits that are agreed upon.

To apply, you send an application form so it's available at stockton.edu grad or through the program chair of whatever program you would be enrolled in, and a letter of interest would need to also be submitted to grad admissions no later than October 31st for the spring and then March 31st for the fall. Individual programs might have other requirements as well, so you want to consult with your program when applying, but this is a great opportunity. It's also a great opportunity to help you networking with your professors and then other students.

Within your program, um, just to help you get ahead and and um, you know, learn a little bit more.

Okay graduate coordinators, graduate coordinators are employed sort of employees at Stockton. You're working sometimes you're earning a paycheck. These are set up through different offices on campus. There are also other benefits like housing that students who receive these positions or or are employed in within these positions could receive. You have to be a degree seeking graduate student to become a grad coordinator and several departments higher.

Um, job duties and compensation varies, like I said, between the office and the position.

To apply, you can view the list of openings by searching graduate coordinator opportunities@stockton.edu. Sometimes they're also listed, for example event services I believe usually lists them on our employment section of our website as well.

OK. So now that you've applied, uh, what's next? So we're going to talk about determining your costs. So the cost of attendance, this is something that we are required to give you to show you. The cost of attendance usually seems a little more inflated than what the bill might look like because the cost of attendance includes 2 different components. We have direct costs and then we have indirect costs. So your direct costs are direct expenses, things like tuition and fees, housing and meals, if you're going to live on campus.

You can kind of think of direct costs as like your bill.

Whereas indirect costs, um, so these are things that we're not actually going to bill you for, but their costs that you may incur as a result of attending college. So things like books and supplies, of course you're going to have to potentially pay for some books and other supplies to attend your classes, transportation, if you're going to commute to campus, the gas that it takes to get here, and then other miscellaneous personal expenses that might come up. These are things that we're not going to bill you for, but it might cost.

Um, you additional extra money to attend school? Um. So we put all of these together and come up with the cost of attendance to give you a roundabout idea of about how much it may estimate, estimated of course cost to attend, I do just want to point out.

If you really just want to look at your expenses, um, what it might cost you to have to pay the university, you're going to want to look at your direct costs. We also have a bill estimator online that you can look at. But again, like I said, we do like to give you that roundabout picture and we are required to show you the total cost of attendance. That also is factored into how much you can borrow or how much financial aid you can have. You can't have more aid.

And loans all of that then with the cost of attendance is because we want to prevent over borrowing and things like that.

OK, your next step is to view your financial aid offer notification. So once you've applied, Stockton will receive your FAFSA and we will send you with a financial aid offer.

Here is a sneak preview, if you haven't applied yet, of our financial aid offer. We go over your direct costs as well as your indirect expenses give you a total estimated cost of attendance as I mentioned.

And then we will go over whatever age you're eligible for. So if you're eligible for any of those grant or scholarship programs, they'll be listed. Majority of students are eligible, U.S. citizens are eligible, non citizens are eligible for the federal direct unsubsidized loan. For graduate students, this is typically 20,500 per year.

Um graduate students have to be at least half time in order to be able to utilize these funds.

And, um, this is probably the main way most graduate students help to to pay for.

For their costs.

Like I mentioned though, that loan, um, the interest is usually a lot lower than a lot of private loans. It doesn't require a cosigner. It doesn't require a credit check, so that is financial aid. It is deferred also while you're in school.

OK, next you viewed your offer, now accepting your offer.

So in order to do that, you're going to Scroll down within your offer and there's a button down there that says accept your financial aid offer. You can also do this within the Ghost Doctor Portal that's going to take you to your portal, but you could also just log in, click on the financial aid tab, and click view your financial aid offer now and then once you get into there, you'll select the eight-year and then accept or decline whatever aid is available. Most free money is already accepted for you. You do have some.

Allegations with the teach grant, of course before that would be applied to your bill, but any scholarship would automatically be applied and then loans you do have to also take action on and do some additional requirements.

OK, so now you viewed your financial aid offer. You've accepted your offer. Now it's time to close that gap.

Just to illustrate that a little bit, um, I'm going, I just want to show you this, umm, so you have your direct costs and you're indirect costs combined equal your total cost of attendance down at the bottom here you have your financial aid, that's usually what we would say is all of your free money and then that federal direct loan would be considered that as well. So then you have a gap potentially you may not because if you do decide to take that federal direct loan, that is pretty large and it does.

A lot of or oftentimes cover majority of graduate students direct costs. However, if you need additional funding, I'm going to go over some other options for you to close that gap.

OK. And your aid offer? We actually list a ton, so I'm going to go over them one by one. External scholarship opportunities. This is a big one. I stressed this to undergrads and graduate students as well. Scholarships are everywhere, so we recommend as applying applying for as many as you can. Where can you find them? There are local organizations out there, scholarship search sites. Fastweb is a great one for local organizations.

So this student on the left here, he received a scholarship from a local Rotary Club. They gifted him a laptop so that helped with an indirect expense. So just applying to a local organization he was able to, he was able to secure that your employers. So the student on the left but the right side worked at Chick-fil-A and she was offered over $20,000 in a scholarship to help fund some of her education.

A lot of employers do offer scholarship opportunities as well as potentially reimbursement, which I'm going to talk about on my next slide. But it's definitely worthwhile to check with your employers to see what opportunities that are available.

Atlantic Care, they also have scholarship opportunities available for some of their employees, so great places to check and then Stockton like I mentioned that Stockton graduate scholarship.

OK. And like I said, tuition waivers and reimbursement. So if you're a Stockton employee, Stockton does offer tuition waivers. We'll waive the cost of tuition for eligible employees. You would contact HR to learn more about that. And then a lot of employers offer tuition reimbursement. So some employers will offer this program where an employee pays their costs upfront and then they reimburse that employee the amount of each course if they achieve a certain.

Grade in that course, so of course that's up to the company to determine, but you would also want to contact your HR office to learn more about that.

And then next would be borrowing, um, so we'll talk about the graduate plus loan and then any private loans. So above and beyond that unsubsidized loan, there is also the graduate plus loan that is a loan through the federal government. However, it is credit based, but it is just a different borrowing option. And then there are also private loans. So with banks, credit unions, different places like that, you can borrow from any lender that you choose. The important thing is you just want to look at the terms and the interest rate.

The lower the interest rate, obviously the better and you want the best terms that suit you. So of course you know if they're giving you a really low interest rate, but you have to pay it back in a year and that's not feasible for you, then you don't want to go with that loan. But the general rule is lower interest rate paid off in the least amount of time, least amount of time as possible that that meets your your needs.

Um, another thing I want to stress on something that's super important to me. That's what my capstone project was for my master, something I'm still working on now. Financial literacy, understanding interest rates, understanding repayment, borrowing doesn't have to be scary as long as you're informed and you're aware of what you're doing and and your means to repay and all of all of that. So as long as you're an informed borrower, it doesn't have to be something that's scary. Or or that's that's quote UN quote bad.

Um, it's just important to to be informed and to make sure you're not overborrowing.

And then next I just want to brush on um. Stockton does offer payment plan options. Those are available through the Bursar's office. So of course the best way other than free money of course is to save and to make payments on your bill.

Umm, if you have a gap, um, so obviously start start saving now. Of course many of you I'm sure have or are you know are trying to. Any contribution that you can make now will save you money in the long run, will save you money later. Working in school could also help, which I'm sure some of you may already have, you know, full time jobs or something like that, but that also obviously helps.

And Stockton bills per semester, so we offer payment plans for up to five months each or five payments, excuse me, one per month each semester. So definitely take advantage of these if this is something that you're thinking about. Something else I just want to mention really quickly too, is you can borrow and do a payment plan. You don't have to pick one or the other. Say you know you can contribute a certain amount throughout the semester, OK, so borrow the rest and then contribute.

That you can, because again, paying that now is going to save you money in the long run.

OK. And now I just want to plug, umm, we are on social media and we do put out a ton of important information, information like tips and tricks, things like that, deadlines, all of that great stuff, different opportunities. We tweet scholarship opportunities. So if you'd like to give us a follow at Stockton Finaid on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter as well. And then if you'd like to get in contact with us, you can do this through the website, through your portal.

Um, just calling us, but we do have a feature on our website where you can e-mail us or you can schedule a phone appointment with a member of our staff. This is on the website and the portal. If you go to stockton.edu/contact financial aid, you can get to it from there as well as within your ghost Doctor Portal.

And then I just have some helpful resources. Um, federal student aid, state aid and then our financial aid office. Our website does have a ton of great information. But like I said, if you have additional questions, of course, we're going to answer some today, but you can always contact us or schedule a phone appointment.

And if you haven't, uh, make sure that you check us out our grad admissions office, um learnmore@stockton.edu/grad and you can also apply there as well.

Thank you so much. So yes, we'll leave this last slide up. We can also bounce back to the other helpful resources slide before we conclude as well so that you have that. But thank you so much for that wealth of knowledge. I feel like I even learned a few new things that I, you know or I get reminded about some important pieces. So I appreciate the attention to detail in your presentation because I think it's really helpful to our students. And so with that, we do have our first question. So I'm excited to share that with you a really good.

Question. The question is, what if I filled out the fasfa with parent information already even though I will be a grad student in fall of 2023?

The.

OK, that's a good question. So if you are going to be a grad student and you marked on your FAFSA that you are going into Graduate School, then they won't look at parent information. You do always have the option to put it in there, but they won't look at that. They'll say, OK, this student is going to be independent, we're only going to look at the student information. The school also matches your FAFSA with your admission status here as well. So if we saw some type of discrepancy, say you didn't mark that.

That question that you were going to be a grad student, um, we would go back and and make some corrections and and get in contact with you.

I'm looking to see if there are any more questions in our chat.

Uh, does not look like we have any more further questions. So thank you so much for your presentation today. We really appreciate it. I wanna just remind everyone, I'm gonna click back just for a second for helpful resources in regards to financial aid that we kind of talked through and then also.

Again, our contact information here and graduate admissions, we're happy to answer any questions you have. Please don't hesitate to reach out and just wanted to thank you all for being here and thank you, Maria Elena for presenting this wonderful.

Thank you so much, Jen. Thank you everybody. Have a great day.

Alright, have a wonderful day everyone. Take care.