Hello,
I just turned 34 and was recently accepted to a Post Baccalaureate program. But the school wants a $300 non-refundable deposit to hold my spot. This starts in January but I am reluctant to send it in because I have bad credit from when I was married. My credit score is around 635. Among other things, I have a foreclosure and also a repossession of a car on my credit report. There is no way I can pay these with my current salary and my ex cannot pay them either. I applied for some private loans for the post bacc and graduate school but was denied. I was wondering if anybody has been in a similar situation. Does anybody have any suggestions or other feedback? Thanks
You should be eligible for a Stafford loan of $12,500 for one year for postbacc. That, I believe, is NOT dependent on your credit score (although I may be mistaken). Talk to the financial aid office at the institution where you are planning to take your post-bacc asking that question and also if there might be any other funding available you can apply for.
Kate
Yes they told me that I am eligible for $12500. I would still be short about $10000 for the program. Yet I am also concerned about funding medical school as I believe you can only borrow about $20000 per year for that.
For med school, you can get subsidized and unsubsidized loans, but both are federal. You can borrow up to the budget your school submits to the feds for tuition and living expenses. Mine figures about 23,000/yr for books and living expenses, and only figures living for 10 months, figuring we are either living with parents or working in the summer our first 2 years. After that at least at my school our schedule runs 12 months/yr the clinical years so our budget figures for the whole 12 months.
Not sure what you can do for the 10,000, unless you can work and save for a year first.
Kate
Don’t forget that there’s an overall maximum amount you can borrow, though I’m not exactly sure how much that is. Last I heard, it was ~230K.
I surely don’t mean to throw a rock in the water or anything. Sometimes, the plan is just not feasible as it stands. It is important to plan on the very long run. If you can’t pay, you can’t pay. Find another way.
I went the CC route that many will advise against. The upside is that I have been accepted while spending less than 3K on all my pre-reqs. The downside is that I got less interviews than other with similar or lower stats.
I don’t really care as my top choice accepted me. However as a disclaimer, I have advanced degrees and evidently my academic past made a huge difference.
You don’t have many options here other than come up with the money. So pick the “least bad” one. I would likely
- Defer my plans
- Start take a few classes at a CC to get things going and gain confidence while keeping my job and not accumulating debt
- Get my credit score up
- Borrow a bit to take a few classes at a 4year
This will not delay things too much, will allow you to keep your job and keep debt low and rebuild your score.
That’s what I would do. I am not saying that’s what you should do.
Good luck.
@ redo-it-all
Thanks! Congrats on your acceptance. I wanted to know what schools interviewed you despite having CC credit for science. Also, what was your science gpa at CC?
can one of you guys give some advice? It is Aika, I`m pre-med student from Kazakhstan
Wow. Can you accept but defer a year? Does the deposit count toward this option?
I’m in application right now to four of the premed/post bac programs and I’m in a similar situation.
I am 43, leaving a 20+ year career in film and in application for a loan modification for the past 3 + years (almost four years - my business is all going offshore). Which is to say while I don’t have a foreclosure on my credit report my credit history has been annihilated by this past 4 years of trying to make things right. I hired a lawyer and am doing the documentation on this and we believe I will manage to get a loan eventually, through sheer force of persistence and the fact that my RESTreport comes back all gold stars (the REST is how the servicers evaluate their loan mod candidates). But I digress…
The fact remains that nothing is certain yet and here I am, in application to the top PB/PM schools, with an eye toward linkages. In order to start school I’d need to leave my career (freelance film production which precludes my working and doing school on the side which is why I’m focusing on a fulltime program). I will need loans out the ying-yang. I can’t really rebuild my credit until I have the loan mod in place, can’t figure out financials until I get in, etc…
I’m hoping I’ll get into one of the fulltime 1 year programs. But if I get accepted and give the down payment and then have to defer (because of credit score, is that even a option?
I’m not sure what to think about this all. I feel like I have to just keep plowing ahead and see where I end up.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Perspective? Relevant experience?
Thanks in advance