| | Special breaks for adult students
-- Page 2By Melody
Warnick • Bankrate.com
Hold down your job. In
2001, 75 percent of employed adult learners got financial help for
classes from their workplace. Why are so many businesses so eager
to boost your education? It's a good investment and, according to
Al Siebert, co-author of "The Adult Student's Guide to Survival
and Success," a good way to attract workers. If you're in the
job market, try getting hired by a company like UPS, which Siebert
says is known for its generous educational benefits. Or try to convince
your current boss to pony up for full or partial tuition and textbook
reimbursement. Another way to make school pay: Get your employer
to commit to giving you a raise when you earn your degree.
Test out. More than
2,900 universities nationwide will give you college credit for passing
a test through the College-Level
Examination Program, or CLEP. The exams are offered in 34 basic
college subjects, including composition, French, sociology, business
law, marketing and U.S. history. While they cost $55 a pop (often
with an additional $15 administration fee), they can save you hundreds
of dollars in tuition, books and fees -- and time -- on classes
you won't have to take if you pass. Bonus: Military personnel can
take CLEP exams for free.
Find scholarships as a team.
"Adult students think of finding scholarships as a solo sport,"
says Tanabe. "But students who look for scholarships as a group
have more success than if they do it by themselves." Set up
an info-sharing system with other nontraditional students in your
department, and leverage your research time by recruiting family
members and friends. Ben Kaplan's CD guide, "Adult and Nontraditional
Scholarships That Totally Rock," is a good starting point,
but you're just as likely to win big bucks through the scholarship
your cousin Debbie read about in her office lunchroom, so spread
the word.
Ditch the loans.
Borrowing enough to cover living expenses while you go back to college
sounds easy enough, but getting mired in debt will wound your family's
finances for years, warns Maria Izquierdo-Whitaker, the assistant
director of financial aid at the Johns Hopkins University School
of Professional Studies in Business and Education in Columbia, Md.
"We want to help [students] get their degree, but we want them
to think about, 'Do I really need this money now? I'm going to have
to repay it,'" she says. Old-fashioned frugality will go a
long way toward minimizing your costs and your debts while you're
in school.
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