Funding Your Harvard Kennedy School Degree: Domestic Students

Hello everyone welcome. Thank you for coming my name is Michael Silvernail. I am the associate director of financial aid here at student financial services. Just a few housekeeping things to talk about before we get started to ask questions. Please type in the chat section also before we go too far can somebody respond and say whether or not they can hear me respond in the chat box.

Thank you so fairly people can hear me. We will also have a copy of this presentation will be made available after the session is over in approximately a week, so anyone who might have some issues that we will have a recording available for you, but they get back to what I was saying. If you have a question. Please type it in the chat section. You can ask the question at anytime, but we're going to wait to respond to the questions until the end of our presentation. Please be as clear and concise as possible. When asking your questions also.

Thank you brother question if it's very specific to you. You may want to email us at our financial aid email address, which is on the slide financial underscore aid at hks.harvard.edu and we would be perfectly happy to address any very unique or specific questions that you might have.

All right, so here it connect at the Kennedy school. We considered financially to be a partnership and as part of that partnership. Our philosophy is that our financial aid is primarily based upon merit. Now there is no one definition of Merit when we say merit a lot of the funding that students receive come from individual centers and the definition of Merit. It's going to vary by each center depending upon the individual mission of that individual center, so for example.

Various funding sources from the central public leadership may have a very different idea of what they're looking for than say somebody from the car Center for human rights or the Wiener Center for social policy because they are looking for students whose background and professional interests align with the mission of that individual center and so each one is going to be looking for what they consider the strongest candidate, but they're going to have different ideas of what the strongest candidate might be similarly. There is funding that that is.

Awarded by our office and that definition merit is done in consultation with the office of admission and it's the same type of criteria that used for admissions purposes. We're looking at your potential for leadership your commitment to public service your academic excellence. All the same sorts of things that you are doing for your application for admission itself, so it is primarily based on merit. There is no one single definition of marriage.

So when I say that initially the Kenny Schools Partnership. There's 2 pieces that there's your part of the partnership and then there's are part of that partnership under your part. You do have some expectations. We need to meet make sure you meet all of our deadlines. We're going to talk about the specific deadlines. Later that means please. Make sure that you know you have to complete the financial aid application before you're going to know whether you've been admitted to the program. The deadline to apply for financial aid is going to be February 3rd so you will not know at that time whether or not you're going to be admitted.

If you don't meet that deadline. You're not gonna be able to be considered for scholarship scholarship assistance through important to make sure you read all of our communications. You should apply for all age, which you're eligible so on the financial aid application. You're going to have multiple different opportunities to apply for aid. You should not just select one or 2 and think that you're going to maximize your chances by just concentrating on one or 2 opportunities. You should be applying for everything that you are reasonably well qualified for and just as a quick caveat.

This session is a pretty general session about financial aid at but we're going to have another session. That's going to occur in January, which is going to be a very specific nuts and bolts of completing the actual financial aid application so be aware there is going to be a future session that will be much more specific on the financial aid application. We're not really going to talk. A lot in detail today. But we will talk about that in the future. In addition, you should be researching any external scholarship funding opportunities and we do have a resource that we will talk about little later to order for you to help you.

Find that if you have consumer debt, you should do your utmost to eliminate any credit card or or car payments any kind of consumer debt that you have so that you're not trying to have to pay those simultaneously, beating your educational expenses. Also, you need to start giving some thought to Jeff? How much educational loan borrowing. You are going to find is appropriate based deployment your aspiration. Xar get is a reality for a lot of students. But that's something only you can decide what your comfort level with that is, and how much you're comfortable tomorrow.

On our part we commit that we will warn all the scholarship and fellowship. A that we have available. So Unfortunately financially is limited were not able to offer funding to all students who apply but we will do our utmost to award as many students as much assistance as we are able to provide we do also have a financial literacy program, which we strongly encourage students to participate in over the course of your attendance at the Kennedy school. We bring in subject matter experts on taxes on credit. We have individual entrance and exit counseling sessions.

I hold a public service loan forgiveness and Loan Repayment Assistance Program. Information session and so we strongly encourage you to participate in those and again. We will also give you a database. We've created of external funding opportunities that we've Co lated overtime from the different sources that applicants have received an so we strongly encourage you to take advantage of that as well.

So when we talk about sources of Harvard aid. I mentioned before that, a lot of our funding comes from centers. But In addition, there is also funding that you were going to be considered for from other resources.

With very limited exceptions, the vast majority of funds you apply for you apply through through our financial aid application. That includes funding through our Kennedy Fellowships are presidential fellowships. The various research centers. You're going to apply through our application is also an opportunity. There's what's called restricted scholarships and what that is. There is a funding available throughout Harvard University that are called restricted scholarships from the Committee on general scholarships and these are very specific funds that are based upon donut preferences.

People who came from a particular area of the world or graduated from a particular high school descended from a particular person and so on the financial aid application. We will ask different questions to allow us to identify people who eat those individual criteria so with the exception of the Sacrament Fellowship application and will provide more information for that later all of the other sources of financial aid from the Kennedy School, you apply through our financial aid application.

This is just some summary information about financial systems here at the Kennedy School now. You can find more detailed information in our financial aid brochure. So when you go to complete the financial aid application. You'll find a link to that brochure on our financial aid application and on the financial aid portal in the admissions in the ignition system so this brochure is available online and will give you more information. The information on tuition and fees is last this current years tuition each speaker.

It's likely to be different for next year, but that gives you a sense of for a 2 year students how much the cost. Attendance would be for midcareer students there. Some additional summer program costs. But that's the academic year cost for 2 year student. The information in the box. It gives you an idea of what percentage of students? How much financial? What percentage of applicants receive financial assistance from the Kennedy school so as you see it varies based upon program but if you are roughly going to calculate it.

How to about?

Roughly 30% of those we admit we're able to offer some assistance to.

So the reality is that means the majority of students who are attending our either attending using their own personal resources or their receiving external funding from an employer or for an outside organization or they're having to borrow student loans, so do. Be aware that that is reality. And that is something that you're going to need to think about.

The Speaking of student loan repayment. It is a reality for students about having to borrow but there are some safety Nets that can help you with repairing your loves we will be providing a lot more information up on this. But basically there's 2 major avenues for support. the Kennedy School has its own loan Repayment Assistance Program, I'm administrative chair of that program and what this does is it assist students with paying their monthly payments on their student loans for loans they borrowed tend to Kennedy School if.

They make a modest income and they are working for a nonprofit or public sector employers. There's more information available on the web at HPS dot Harvard L rap and that has all the information upon the salary guidelines income and assets that type of employment that qualifies but this can help you with your monthly repayment on your student loans for up to 5 years, a participation in that program.

In addition, there's the federal public service loan forgiveness program, the way that works is if you repay your federal loans using an income based repayment plan, which means your monthly payment is based on how much you make and you work for qualifying employer, which is US Federal, state local or tribal government or for a 501C3 nonprofit then the federal government will forgive the portion of the loans that are left after that 10 year period of time. Now there's been a lot of discussion in news about a very small percentage of people.

Qualifying that that is slowly improving. I myself would receive forgiveness into this program so I can attest that Israel and we do expect for a larger percentage of people to be approved for the program overtime. But it does require students to be working for qualifying employer, making payments under an income based repayment plan and it's only for federal loans.

So what can you do now? Well, First off the financial aid application is now currently available but in order to submit the financial aid application. You have to first have submitted your application for admission one to submit the application in mission a day after you do so you will receive an email from us, saying that the financial aid application can now be completed and it's completed through the same website. You use to complete your admissions application. Additionally, you should take the opportunity now to exploring external funding resources?

So look for any outside scholarship aid that you have that you may qualify for at this point. It's best to do that as early as possible to maximize your chances of receiving it make sure you prepare financially get rid of your credit card debt your consumer debt if at all possible try to save now. The more you save now. The less you may have tomorrow. Later, the better off you're going to be. I would encourage you to follow the blog that the emissions office put out because we also put information out there on financial aid so any new opportunities become available.

We strongly encourage you to do so and then of course, we always encourage you to reach out to us by by email at financialunderscoreaid@hps.harvard.edu and we're always happy to answer any questions, you might have.

So we mentioned the external scholarship database. This is a link and it's available. If you go to our financially. The main Kennedy School page and then go to the financial aid website. You'll find a link to the external scholarship database. In addition to some links you'll see on the page of some external sources. We put together our own database overtime. When we've identified people have enrolled at the Kennedy School, who have received funding from a particular organization, we have added that to our database so it is a.

Fairly well vetted database of sources that should be legitimate and possibilities for people to apply now. It's still a matter of serendipity often people who have external resources. They may know they may already know about it because it's associated with something they've already done like their Pickering, fellow or a PPI PPI or something similar, but occasionally people will find funding from sources that they weren't otherwise aware of so we do recommend you spend some time searching for some external resources.

So how to apply I sort of mentioned that before but once you submit the application permission. You will get an email with a link to the financial aid application.

When you complete the application. It's going to have multiple parts. There's parts where you're going to give us some basic information, but also for a lot of the individual fellowships. You also have to submit an individual essay now different fellowships will have different prompts on what they're going to be looking for in those essays, so you may not be able to use the same essay. For every single individual fellowship, but it's perfectly fine to have different essays that are crafted slightly differently, depending on individual fellowships, which you're applying I would strongly suggest that they're not mutually contradictory.

You don't want one that says when I grew up. I've always wanted to do X and then have something completely different and another one, but in general, most of the fellowships are considered by independent committees and therefore it's perfectly appropriate to write different differently focused essays, depending upon the fellowship. You're applying for if you're a domestic student. We strongly imply. We strongly urge you to submit the faster. The free application for federal student aid because even though financial aid at Kennedy School is primarily based on merit.

Some of the funds that we have also have a secondary consideration of financial need, so if you don't file the FAFSA. You won't be able to you will have to presume that you don't have any financial need, and therefore if you want a full consideration. You should also file that fasa the deadline for both the financial aid application and the FAFSA is February 3rd, 2020 as I mentioned earlier. It's very important to realize that you have to meet this deadline that if you wait to apply until after you know if you've been admitted you won't have the opportunity.

Should be considered for scholarship and Grant and fellowship opportunities?

This suggests also reiteration of sort of the basic timeline, the financial aid application is currently available. They found the Fasa is now currently available. The deadline to submit the Fasa in the financial aid application is February 3rd. The admissions decisions and financial aid information releases done roughly at the same time, which is in the middle of March and you're going to have until the middle of April to respond.

This is just a timeline showing the different rough deadlines. I do want to correct one thing on this slide. That's changed since this presentation was put together you see where it says early January in sacrament fellowship deadline that is now been moved to February 3rd as well. So it's no longer early January for those who are not aware of what this document fellowship is I would encourage you to Google Zuckerman and Kennedy HKS and send it for public leadership, but basically it's four individuals who.

Either already have advanced degrees in business law or medicine or are planning to do joint or concurrent programs with business law or Madison and so, if that is something that is relevant to you. I would encourage you to Google. Central public leadership in Sacramento Fellowship and you can find all the details because the Zuckerman Fellowship has a separate application. Unlike all the other opportunities where you apply through our financial aid application. You're going to be applying independently for the Sacrament Fellowship.

And with that, we are going to move on to the question section. So we will address any questions that people have?

Uh.

Indeed, what I would encourage you to do is to type into the chat section. Any questions that you have again, please be as clear and precise as possible, and then we will address any questions that you have.

While we're waiting for some questions to be submitted there were some questions that were asked prior.

Some of the questions included information about the sources of financial aid that we have so we mentioned earlier. The funding is available through different sources, so there's the center of the individual centers, but you apply through our financial aid application, there is money that is that we decided upon in consultation with the office of admissions. There is money from the Committee on general scholarships, so those are the main sources of funding through Harvard sources that students are eligible to apply for another question that we received in the past.

Is about whether or not there's an opportunity to apply for the second year in the program?

Financial aid up the opportunity for financial aid is at the prior to your initial admission, so there isn't a new scholarship application for your second year so in order to be considered for funding. You do need to apply at this time you can't wait and reapply your second year.

Another question was.

How should you plan to deal or how do you plan to budget for living expenses when you are when you been in the workforce now you're going back to going back to school. But there's a saying that isn't isn't wasn't done for public policy schools. But there's a saying that's associated with law students, which is if you live like her lawyer when you're a student you're going to live like a student when your lawyer and that's still true here, which means you do need to expect.

That your standard of living that you have to adjust that you do you can't it's not realistic to expect? It you're going to maintain the same standard of living when your student if you were when you are employed. Now, some expenses are unavoidable. There are people who have dependence. There are people who have other obligations that are which they have which are for them non discretionary so we do understand that, but when it comes to your standard of living. You are certainly welcome to live at whatever standard you like.

But when it comes to financial aid total financial aid, including funding for loans and from all sources cannot exceed what's considered to be your costs attendance, which includes an allocation from living expenses are cost for education allocates approximately 2900 dollars a month for living expenses. So when you're thinking about what you should be budgeting for this is done based upon a biennial student living expense survey that is, we send out the student body and so we based that appan? What's considered to be a modest but livable standard.

Based upon the survey results from the student body. So when you look at how much you should be budgeting for were basically allocating $2900 a month for living expenses. You should be trying your upmost to live within that figure. And if you feel your expenses are going to be higher than that. You need to make sure you have your own personal savings and resources in order to supplement that so that you can reach your living expenses.

Another question is can, we apply for the Sacrament Fellowship in our second year if we decide to pursue a concurrent degree that.

You can only apply for this document before your first attendance at the Kennedy School. So you could for example, be admitted to the Kennedy school defer your admission to start at another at another program a concurrent or joint program and then then apply for the second fellowship for your first year at the Kennedy School but you cannot be enrolled at the Kennedy School and taking courses and then apply for the sacrament for any subsequent year.

See other questions loan repayments after graduation, so we will be writing much more detail when you're here, but when it comes to repaying your loans after graduation.

You do have a variety of options. There is options when it comes to federal loans for both standard fixed length for dinner plans, but also income based repayment plans. It conveys your payment plans base your monthly payment upon how much you make rather than how much you borrowed so it is in very important safety net to make sure that your total monthly payment on your student loans is not excessive based upon your total income. Now it is ideally. It is def. Coupled with eligibility for the public service loan forgiveness program because then if you.

Prepaid allowed 100, income based repayment plan and you work for qualifying employer. You can have the expectation of loan forgiveness at the end of 10 years. But even if you aren't participating in the public service loan forgiveness program. You do still have the opportunity to participate in income based repayment.

Uh someone asked about the available availability of internships and work study opportunities. There are there are opportunities for both there is for example, a summer internship fund the summer internship fund is a fund that helps students who are in unpaid internships. You have the opportunity to apply for funding. You'll get that opportunity in the late fall or early spring of your first year and you will have the opportunity to apply to obtain some funding to help you.

Good an unpaid internship there are also funding opportunities available through the various research Centers for summer internships. You'll apply through a common application that allows you to consider for a variety of these different opportunities. There is also work study available for students who do you still want to use work study that is something you have to file the fast for in order to be considered, but we do have that and there are a number of students who do work using work study. You should be careful, though, students are discouraged from working in their first year.

It's not prohibited but do you want to make sure his students have the opportunity to take full advantage of the full program and to make sure you can handle the coursework before you take on additional responsibilities of employment, but That being said, there certainly are students who choose to work and there are quite a few students who work in their second year's course assistance course assistance. There's no opportunity in application process in your first year if you wish to work with faculty members to act as a teaching assistant with individual courses and that's quite common, so there are.

Employment opportunities available to help you with your educational expenses.

There's a question about housing costs realistically housing is very expensive here. We are estimate when it comes to what the average rent is students pay is around.

Roughly $1700 a month that the average rent of students who are in the program so it is not cheap. Alot of students choose to live in Harvard. Harvard housing covered apartments. It is not subsidized when it comes to the cost that cost is market rate. So you do need to be aware of it. It's very convenient and all the expenses are wrapped into it when it comes to utilities and Internet etc. But it's not a particularly low cost option. There are some Harvard dormitories graduate student dormitories. Those are less expensive there.

They are limited commodity, but that is absolutely a great opportunity for people who are willing to sort of live in a more dorm type situation. It's strictly graduate students who are not living with undergrads, but it does require of course, an adjustment to your lifestyle. If you've been out of school for a while, it might be a bit of a culture shock to go back to living in a dormitory and then there are certainly plenty of students who live in the surrounding communities. You can find lower lower costs rent in by rooms for life rooms to share.

Arby's to share people find apartments with things like Craigslist just be aware. We always caution. People there are people who get scamed you have to be very careful. If you are trying to find Department at a distance and you aren't actually there in person to make sure that it's a legitimate opportunity. So do make sure you know caveat. Emptor you do need to be careful to make sure that you are working with someone who's legitimate but you know That being said, there are ways to reduce some of your cost of living. But it certainly is not an inexpensive place.

Place to live.

If there are no additional questions. Thank you all for your attendance at this session again. We will have another session in January, where we will discuss more specific nuts and bolts of the individual application. We do have a couple of last questions. Sorry as I'm wrapping up there is an opportunity. There's a question about if I have health insurance program at another University should I pay for another health plan, you can waive your health insurance here at while attending Harvard if you have comperable insurance.

And so that is something that you would go through the waiver process. Once you've once you accepted your offer admission in the early summer, you'll have the opportunity to submit documentation that you have capable insurance. You can wave another question is with regards to public service loan forgiveness? How is 10 years to find ultimately you have to make 120 qualifying payments while working in qualifying employment so it doesn't necessarily have to be consecutive but let's say you did, 3 years worth of monthly payments with.

Qualified employer so that would be 36 payments and then you are unemployed. You went to work for the private sector and then went back into qualifying plug it after the Clock would stop when you are no longer in qualifying employment and then would start back up after you were employed again in qualifying employer. So it might take you more than 10 years in a case like that to amass 10 years worth of qualifying payments. But you wouldn't lose credit for their payments, you did. Before then, it does not have to be unbroken.

Alright, well. Thank you all very much. We are, we were glad to have you participate and we will make a copy of this recording available in about a week's time and thank you very much.