Tuition for online education programs at KU

Ian Ferguson:

So, all right, everyone, thank you for attending the Financial Aid Q&A for the University of Kansas. So just a brief introduction. My name is Ian Ferguson, I am an admissions advisor for the University of Kansas School of Education, and my program partner is Susan Hartz, who's also an admissions advisor.



Susan Hartz:

Hello. Hi.



Ian Ferguson:

And the person who is going to be leading the Financial Aid webinar is gonna be Olivia and get ready to learn everything you need to know about Financial Aid. Right Olivia?



Olivia Vaca:

Yes, absolutely. I'm gonna give the rundown and it's a lot to take in, so I will provide contact info for me at the end and the general Financial Aid line if you guys have any additional questions or anything like that.



Ian Ferguson:

Perfect. Okay, here we go.



Olivia Vaca:

Awesome. So one of the first questions we get as Financial Aid counselors and it is, what are the costs of my graduate education? Here at the University of Kansas tuition is generally charged per credit hour. So what that effectively means is if you are taking more credit hours in one semester your cost may be a little bit higher. Some departments also have additional course fees that are assessed typically per credit hour as well. You can always find more information about that with your program on the department website. The registrar also has a total list of all tuition and fees as well.

When we talk about the costs, generally, they can vary from program to program. To kind of get a most accurate estimate of the per credit hour cost or per program cost, you'll definitely wanna check out your department's website. As I said, the registrar also has a list of tuition and fee amounts. They are broken up by programs. So just the general cost of program total per credit hour, and then some of those program, like I said, to additional fees will be found under an additional fee calculator.



With the Financial Aid website, we do try to provide kind of an estimate calculator that you can use. That could be found at financialaid.ku.edu/calculatecosts/tuitionfees, and basically what you'll do there, you will find it is a kind of chart that just says, okay, what degree program are you in? How many credit hours are you anticipating on taking, and then it'll go further to even ask you if you're taking specific courses in your department that might have additional fees. Well, it asks you how many of those credit hours you're taking as well.



Okay. Next slide. Maybe. Okay. What is the estimated cost of attendance? Another question we get. The cost of attendance, basically, is just a good estimate of how much it's going to cost you to come to the university for a year. We also break that down into semester amounts depending on what you're using it for. The items that are included in this estimate of cost of attendance, we do include tuition and fees. Typically for most people we'll start out with just full-time estimates, assuming that you're gonna be coming full-time. Depending on your actual enrollment that budget may change if you are a consistently halftime enrolled student, three quarters time, anything like that.

Housing, we provide estimates for both on-campus and off-campus housing, so depending on if you are living in one of the dorm or apartment options available at KU, or if you're deciding to live off-campus, we will kind of give an estimate of what we think that would cost. And we'll talk about in a second here what that means, if your actual costs are higher than what we estimate.



Books and supplies, so obviously you're gonna have to buy some books. We do provide a pretty healthy estimate for that. I would say most people probably don't exceed their books budget, but if for some reason they do, you can always talk to us in the Financial Aid office as well. And then transportation and personal expenses, so those are things that you will find are not charged by the university and you really won't have any charges that come in on your KU account specifically for those, but we of course understand that as graduate students, as students in general, you're probably going to need to go places and you're going to need to pay for personal things. So we allow a little bit of a budget in there for you so that if essentially you need to take out Financial Aid to cover any of those costs, you have the availability to.



Why is the cost of attendance important? That is essentially the maximum number that you can receive in Financial Aid. So the total that you're receiving in loans, scholarships, grants, any kind of sponsorships or tuition waivers that you receive, all of that combined cannot exceed your cost of attendance at the school per year, so you kind of wanna keep that in mind. If you get a ton in scholarship offers, if you get $1,000,000, you probably won't actually be able to get $1,000,000 out of pocket handed to you.

As mentioned previously, as a student, unless you're living on campus or you are charging your bookstore purchases to your KU account, you will only be charged for those tuition and fees directly through KU. So housing, books, transportation, personal expenses, most of the time, those are gonna be things that you have to budget and figure out for yourself if you're kind of living within your means. Tuition and fees, those will be directly charged to you. If you have Financial Aid coming in, it will go to pay those charges automatically. There's not usually anything that you guys need to do to initiate that other than setting it up in the first place.



Also, as mentioned previously, if you've received Financial Aid up to your cost of attendance and you cannot receive any more, but you feel that your personal expenses have exceeded what we budgeted, you can make an appointment in the Financial Aid office. We will look at what is called a budget adjustment and a cost of attendance appeal, and if there's any adjustments like to tuition and fees that we can make on the backend, we'll go ahead and do that. Anything else that you're requesting out of your own pocket, you need more housing expenses paid for or anything like that, you'll have to provide proof so that we can go ahead and see if we can increase that budget for you.



Okay. How do I apply for Financial Aid? So if you are a US citizen or an eligible noncitizen, and you can figure this out by going to studentaid.gov, they do have instructions on checking your eligibility, if you are one of those, you will want to file a FAFSA. Now, it is not required that you file a FAFSA, but if you are wanting to receive any kind of federal aid, any type of federal loans, you will need to file a FAFSA. The FAFSA is just a form that takes your personal and financial information to determine your eligibility essentially for federal aid, and they use a calculation called the Expected Family Contribution. Essentially what that number is, is what they believe your family, meaning you and your spouse can afford to pay for your education. They are not necessarily expecting you to actually pay that out of pocket, but it is an indicator of your financial need, so that's essentially what that is for.



The FAFSA does use your tax information or your income information if you didn't file taxes from two years prior. So for the upcoming 2023-2024 school year, it will use 2021 tax information. If you did file United States taxes, you can transfer your tax information from the IRS directly into the FAFSA by using the data retrieval tool. This is a process that is pretty much done automatically. So when you are in the FAFSA form it will ask you to go to the IRS site and then from there it will have you put in your name, birthday, and the address information of where you filed your 2021 taxes. You do have to be very careful because it will air out and it will not pull up your tax information if you put in the wrong address or if you put in the wrong format of the address. So sometimes if you have your taxes readily available, doesn't help or doesn't hurt to just take a look and see, did you put street or did you put S-T, because that can be very important. But it does make it very easy, once you get matched up it will automatically transfer all of that income information in for you so you don't really have to fill any of it out. Just kind of make sure that it's all correct.



If you are not a US citizen, so if you're an international student or just a student who's not a US citizen, that doesn't necessarily mean that you cannot receive Financial Aid, but we do have a separate form that you can fill out. That is called the Institutional Student Need Analysis Worksheet, also referred to as an ISNAW. International students, we highly, highly, highly recommend that you file this by March 1st each year that you're at KU. It does not necessarily guarantee that you will receive funding, but March 1st is our priority deadline. So if you may have financial need, we can check your eligibility for a grant through that application.



Similar to the FAFSA, this will collect your personal and financial information to determine your Financial Aid eligibility. Unfortunately, we don't have any way to just automatically transfer the information in, so you will have to convert your information to US dollars if it is not already, and input that information yourself. And for both the FAFSA and the ISNAW, as graduate students, it will ask you for your personal information, and it will also ask you for your spouse's information if you are married. So just keep that in mind. Even if you file separately, it will usually ask you to take into account their income.



Step number three is being in communication with your academic department about funding opportunities. So a lot of research positions, scholarships, assistantships, a lot of those are available through the department and typically, your colleagues and your professors and members of the department are gonna know when those availability... Or when those opportunities are available for you.



Okay. What types of aid are available to graduate students? Let's talk a little bit more about the different types of aid. So grants and scholarships, those are obviously what people like. They're free money essentially. These are things that are often awarded to graduate students through their departments. Some departments will determine the eligibility of that through your admissions application, and some departments may require a separate application. So it never hurts to check with your department just to see are you automatically considered or not.



Some departments may also require that you file either a FAFSA or an ISNAW. Typically that is gonna be in the case of any type of needbased awards. So if you're kind of in the running for something like that, they will usually want your financial information to determine if you meet that level of financial need. Departments will work with Financial Aid and scholarships if you are eligible to kind of get everything applied to your account. So usually when you get an award letter from your department that says, "You've got a scholarship for $2000," there's nothing really that you need to do to initiate that other than accepting the scholarship. Your department will actually work to send those funds to us so that we can apply it to the student account for you.

Specifically, for international students, we do have availability of the KU International Student Tuition Grant. This is a needbased program for international students who have completed their first full academic year at KU. This is a very limited fund grant, so we award it to only a few students every year. And in order to be awarded this, you must be an F1 or a J1 international student admitted to your degree program and enrolled in a minimum of six credit hours. So you wanna make sure that you are at least filing with that. For the needbased portion you do have to have a calculated EFC of $5000 or less to be eligible for this, and you must file an ISNAW by March 1st for priority consideration. You can file your ISNAW after that March 1st deadline, but typically we award students by that March 1st deadline. So you'll want to make sure if you really, really think that you're eligible and are in need of it, file before March 1st to really be in the running for that.



Other scholarships, we do have a KU scholarship portal that we are trying to get all of our scholarships across campus centralized into. That can be found at ku.academicworks.com. Graduate funding, as we mentioned previously, a lot of it is going to come from your department, but you can also visit that website which we posted in the chat, and find some opportunities for external funding based on your department or the major that you're in.



A couple of national sites that are good to find scholarship resources on is fastweb.com and collegeboard.org. The only kind of bad things about those sites is that they are national scholarship sites, so a lot of the scholarships that are posted on those are going to have a ton of applicants. Something that I don't think a lot of people realize with graduate school, specifically, is if you're part of any kind of professional organization, association, anything like that, double check on their website. They might have scholarship postings for graduate student scholarships or fellowships or something like that. Kind of do a search in your hometown or in the town that you're living in right now to see if there's any local scholarships that might be available to students participating in a graduate program. I think it's a lot better and a lot easier if you try to look for your local stuff first and then expand to the national, if necessary.

A big part of graduate school for a lot of people are doing assistantships, so we have graduate teaching assistantships, graduate research assistantships and just regular graduate assistantships. These are administered by individual graduate programs, so you will need to ask about the opportunities available there if you are interested in them. I have also seen some graduate research and graduate teaching assistantships posted on our employment site. GRAs and GTAs are eligible to have some or all of their tuition paid. That kind of eligibility, that determination of how much is dependent on the department, it's dependent on what they have available, and what they already have established with the university.



With these positions a discount or a waiver is applied to tuition based on your position, and this is applied directly to your KU bill. So again, other than accepting the position and making sure that everything's all set up with your HR, there's nothing additional that you need to do to get that paid into your student account. It will happen automatically for you. Do keep in mind also that the amount that you receive from this can affect your eligibility for other Financial Aid. As I mentioned a couple of slides ago, your total Financial Aid cannot exceed your cost of attendance, so if you're getting, let's say, 50% of your tuition covered, you might think about if you have a $50,000 fellowship coming in that might lower the amount. Typically that doesn't make you ineligible for certain types of aid, it just lowers the amount, but ultimately it all depends on the actual numbers that are coming in for you.



Federal Work Study, so similar to the GTA, GRAs, these are just work study positions that are available across campus. You can find them all over. They may be specific to your department. You may also be able to work in outside departments as well. How Federal Work Study works is kind of different to any other form of aid. So typically what that entails is you set up your job, you kind of agree on the terms, like you're working 20 hours a week or something like that, and your employer will still pay you with a paycheck. So you will receive your Federal Work Study money to your direct deposit account or you'll receive it in a paper check if you don't have one, and it will kind of be up to you to use that funding to then pay for your tuition if you want it to go to your tuition. A lot of people just use it to pay for their housing and their personal expenses, so you can definitely do that as well.



And for graduate students, the Federal Work Study begins at 5000, that is gonna be your initial maximum, depending on your financial need you could increase that up to 12,000 per year. So again, that's just kind of working with whoever your employer is and seeing what funding is available, how many hours they'll let you work, how much they will let you earn. Some positions will also let you earn additional funds once you've ran out of work study, but again, depends entirely on the department and the position.



Now, let's talk about this sometimes less fun options of financial aid which are our loan options. So the most popular loan that most graduate students take is the unsubsidized direct loan that comes from filing the FAFSA, so pretty much all graduate students are going to be eligible for up to 20,500 a year. That is the annual maximum, so you cannot borrow unsubsidized loans higher than that. The other thing that can affect that amount is that you do have an aggregate loan limit, so for graduate students, the absolute maximum and federal unsubsidized loans that you can borrow is gonna be 138,500, and that does include any undergraduate federal loans that you received. So any undergraduate subsidized or unsubsidized loans also go into that aggregate amount. In order to be awarded that you just have to file the FAFSA. There is no income requirement or anything like that. Like I said, the only thing that could decrease that amount is either your cost of attendance or if you're reaching your aggregate loan limits.



In order to be eligible for those direct loans each semester you must be enrolled at least half time, so for graduate students that's five hours or more. Something to kind of keep in mind too, particularly with Federal Loans is if you start out the semester enrolled in five credit hours, and then three weeks in you drop down to three credit hours, we will probably ask for you to return some of that funding. So just keep in mind, if you're kind of skirting the line on like being halftime or being full-time and you're thinking about dropping classes at any point, you will wanna reach out to Financial Aid, just see like, "Okay, if I drop at this point in the semester, am I going to have to return anything or am I okay?" So once you've reached 60% completion in that class, we don't require you to return anything back. So just reach out to us if you have any questions on that.



The second option is Graduate PLUS Loans. So these work very similarly to the Parent PLUS Loan that is offered to dependents of undergraduate students. The great thing about the Grad PLUS Loans, there is no aggregate limit. There is no maximum, as long as you can keep getting approved for the loans, you can keep taking them. You can only borrow again up to your cost of attendance minus your or their financial aids, you can't just be making bank off of it, but you can take up to your maximum each semester with those PLUS loans, if you would like to. Again, to be eligible for that PLUS loan, you do have to file your FAFSA, there's no income requirement, no EFC requirement. And you will have to fill out a separate loan application at studentaid.gov, and it will do a credit check. Now as far as I know, they do not check for any kind of particular number or anything like that, they are mostly looking for big credit inhibitors, so things like foreclosures, bankruptcies, default on any loans. Any of that could affect your eligibility for that PLUS loan. And again, for that, you need to be enrolled at least half time each semester to receive that funding.



With both of those types of loans, so with unsubsidized direct loan and PLUS loans, you do kind of have the option, once you graduate and get into the repayment terms, if you want to consolidate those loans, you can, which is one of the benefits of staying within the federal loan spectrum. With the unsubsidized direct loans, right now, you're looking at a 4.99% interest rate that is reevaluated each July, so just kinda keep that in mind, we usually don't see like mega increase or decrease year to year, but it could happen. And the Graduate PLUS Loans, they do have a separate interest rate right now, they are at a 7.54% interest rate.



Your third loan option is gonna be a KU Endowment Loan. KU Endowment is a program that obviously runs through KU, they only offer these loans to KU students, so that allows them to have a little bit lower interest rate and a little bit better repayment structure than some private loans might. They do have both an annual and an aggregate limit, so for graduate students, they will let you borrow up to 6000 per year, and you can borrow a total of $12,000 from them. They also do have their own application process, so the link for that will be provided in the chat. And typically they will require a cosigner for students that do not make at least $25,000 a year. Sometimes they can work with you depending on your situation, but just keep in mind, you might also need a cosigner for that.



And then your last option are private and alternative student loans, so these are gonna be very variable in your interest rates, in your repayment structure. I personally cannot give any advice as to which one to go with and which one not to go with, that's gonna kinda be up to you and your own personal situation. With the private and alternative loans, they typically do require a credit check, and they may look at the number, or they may be like the PLUS and just look for big credit decisions. Typically for private loans, you do not need to file the FAFSA, a lot of them will have you fill out a loan authorization form, so you may have to do that if you don't have a FAFSA on file. And again, with these private loans, a lot of them are not gonna have annual or aggregate limits, so typically you can borrow up to your cost of attendance minus your other aid, and again, you can probably keep borrowing from them so long as you get that approval every year.



Financial Aid has made a list of private loan lenders that have been used at KU within the last three years, and that is available on our website. It is by no means an exhaustive list of every private loan lender out there so I would suggest, if you don't see your personal bank on there, you might wanna check with them and see if they offer student loans. But in general, that list that we have includes some of the more popular ones.



Okay. When will financial aid disperse? So this is very important, I'm sure for a lot of you, financial aid cannot disperse early for any reason, but it does disperse 10 days before the semester start. And when we disperse that aid, we will go ahead and apply it to your KU bill first, so it'll pay for any tuition fees, anything like that, if you have on-campus housing costs, it'll go ahead and pay that. Your financial aid will pay down your charges, and then if there's anything left over, so any excess funding, that will be refunded to you, and that's usually available starting a few days before classes, assuming that you have everything set up as far as your loan documents and everything.



Those refunds do come in the form of a paper check, unless you have direct deposit set up with the university, and if you do have direct deposit, it'll just automatically go into your bank account every semester. So there's nothing more that you really need to do if you do have any outside funding, so outside scholarships, you will want to double check with those donors, and first of all see if there's anything that they need from us. Some of them will require me in the Financial Aid office to fill out a form essentially stating what other financial aid you're receiving so I can send that back to them. Most donors will just have you send where to send the money, where they can send the check, which is gonna be the Financial Aid office. If there's any kind of conference that needs to be done between us and a donor, any specific instructions they can always work with us or I can get them set up with the scholarships team in our office to make sure that that's a pretty smooth transition.



And then I think we've got some deadlines here. I will say for financial aid, if you guys are coming in the summer or in the fall 2023 semesters and you have not filed your FAFSA or ISNAW, you will want to hop on that as soon as you can. There is not a real deadline for the FAFSA, you can follow the FAFSA as long as it is still the age year that you're requesting aid. But of course, it is harder to retroactively put on aid, so you'll just wanna kinda make sure that your FAFSA and everything is done and set up probably by that first month that you start classes.



Susan Hartz:

Awesome, thanks so much. And then it's just another big reminder for the summer 2023 deadlines. The final deadline is coming up this Monday, April 24th, and then those classes are starting on May 8th, and then also that we are taking applications for the fall term as well. And then I do see that we were asked some questions while you were talking, Olivia. Are you able to see those questions that were in the Q&A?



Olivia Vaca:

Yes. I think... Okay, so I had... So the estimated housing costs on the website for nonresidents are not fees to pay to KU, they're just listed as estimates to help people budget, right? That is correct. So if you are not planning on living on campus, your housing costs, we don't know what they're going to be 'cause it's gonna depend on where you choose, so we just kind of give an estimate, that is the estimate that we provide to all graduate students. So you'll wanna keep in mind, like I said, if you end up living somewhere and your actual charges for what you're paying are higher than our estimated number for your housing, get in touch with me, get in touch with your counselor and we can do a cost of attendance appeal for you so that if you need extra funding to cover that cost, you are able to get it.



Susan Hartz:

Awesome. Yeah, so that second question, "Can I still apply for a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction and be considered for admission for fall?" So on the admission side of things Ian and I only work with the online master's programs, so but you can always go to KU's website and see who... And you can contact the Department of Curriculum and Instruction to find out about that. So on the financial aid side of things, anything you wanna add for that, Olivia?



Olivia Vaca:

As far as financial aid, you can absolutely still apply. FAFSA, it's gonna be available until June next year, so just go fill it out as soon as you can. If you are not a FAFSA eligible person fill out that is not as soon as you can. It is after the march priority deadline, so there may not be funding available, but fill it out anyway. We will double check and see if there is anything and on the off chance there is, you can get it.



Susan Hartz:

Right, and then we've got one more. Can I get full funding for PhD, my Bachelor's in Science and Ed qualification? So again, you can reach out to the departments directly about the PhD programs, and then, I don't know if there's anything else to add for that, Olivia.



Olivia Vaca:

Not in particular. Definitely reach out to the department for that type of funding. If there's any additional funding needed in the form of loans or anything like that, I can obviously help you with that and just do the FAFSA or the ISNAW. We can always talk numbers once those are submitted.



Ian Ferguson:

Alright, alright. Well, this is concluding our presentation for financial aid. Thank you, Olivia, for taking the time out of your day to really illuminate this complex topic for all of us. I really appreciate. I'm sure all of the attendees also appreciate it. And thank you everyone who attended the webinar. Thanks for your time and Rock Chalk, everyone, right?