Paying for Graduate School

[KSigkid]

Originally Posted by Kevin

All I can say is that I hope either one of two things are true for you:

1) You marry a rich man; or
2) Your parents can afford to pay for your M.Ed.

The teachers I know who are pursuing Master's degrees teach at the same time. That'd be something to look into so that you don't have to live off of your loans. If you're doing this for money and plan to teach high school, I'd suggest that instead of a Master's right now, start teaching, wait 5 years, get National Board Certified (in my state that means you get a $5,000/year raise for 10 years with the ability to renew which is significantly higher than what you get for having a Master's) and work on your Master's over the Summer. You could also wait until you qualify for in state tuition and save a lot of cash.

A Master's degree is typically a lot of work, but it usually doesn't take that long to get. You could probably wait til you qualified for in state tuition, then chip away at that Master's over the next 5 years, pass the National Board exam and use that $ to pay whatever loans you have off.

At any rate, do what you want to do, but I think you'd be smart just to wait a bit, qualify for in-state, work the med-school angle a bit more and do the above things in the interim. If you end up as a teacher, at least you won't be a broke teacher.

I think this is really good advice - my family has a lot of teachers (of all ages), and they handled it in this manner. Most did their masters while they were working, so that the student loans didn't become outrageous.