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Francesca Chaba: And kick us off here, this is some information from the Case School of Engineering, about, 'Financial Aid & Getting Started for Online Master's Programs.'

Francesca Chaba: So this is me. I'm an admissions advisor for these programs. I believe this slide will be at the end as well. So if anybody has any questions, you can feel free to just reach out to me. Here's some more information about Mike, who is joining us today. Mike began a dedicated career in higher education after first exploring professional opportunities in pharmaceutical formulation. He joined the Office of Undergraduate Admission at Case Western Reserve University, as an admission counselor, before transitioning in 2012 to the Office of University Financial Aid, where he previously worked as a student employee. A lifelong Clevelander and a Case Western Reserve alumnus, Mike earned his Bachelor of Arts in chemistry with a minor in history. During his time as a student, Mike played varsity football, sang in the gospel choir, and was involved in a variety of other groups and organizations. He is committed to helping to demystify financial aid for families by educating them on the tools and processes available. His goal is to help students situate themselves for success during and after their time at Case Western. So thank you so much for being here, Mike. And then, Karen, did you just want to share a little bit about yourself as well?

Karen Murphy: Absolutely. Yeah. My name is Karen Murphy. I'm the online programs manager for the Case School of Engineering. I look after all the graduate programs that we have here. So if you are considering joining with an online master's degree program at Case, then I would be working with you to some extent. Although I am mainly in the background, but I'm always available to reach out. Love being able to help people out in whatever way I can. So thank you for the chance to speak. Thanks.

Francesca Chaba: Sure. Absolutely. So I'm just gonna speak a little bit more about the scholarship that is offered, specifically through our online engineering program. We call this a New Student Scholarship, just meaning that if you're new to the program, and you apply for the program and are admitted, you receive the scholarship. You can think of it like when you are applying for this program, you're applying for the scholarship as well. So if you're admitted, it's something that would be applied to your student account each semester after you register for classes, after the conclusion of our add/drop period. So you can see here that the original cost of tuition for the program is $63,570. The New Student Scholarship is worth $24,570. And then subtracting one from the other, you're left with $39,000 total, as your cost of tuition for all 10 courses. It's 30 credit hours. So each course is about $3,900 after that scholarship. If you happen to be a Case Western alum, you receive an additional $3,900 in a scholarship. So you can think of it like it's 10 courses for the cost of 9, which is a very sizable reduction as well. So definitely something to keep in mind as a Case Western alumni.

Francesca Chaba: And now I'll just hand it over to Mike to speak some more about some questions about financial aid.

Mike Collins: All right. Thank you, Frankie. So I know that financial aid can be very scary for people. And so these are some questions that we typically get from graduate students, that really help them to better understand what they should be expecting and what they'll be going through. And then just also, in trying to plan for the future so they have some idea of what's going to happen after they finish. So it's really, first and foremost, can they afford the cost of the program? And then also, thinking about what happens to any type of debt that they already have.

Mike Collins: A lot of our students are coming from a graduate program, or they have some sort of undergraduate degree already. And so they may have taken out loans, they may have had some other debt that they've accumulated just during that time. And then also, just thinking about, okay, Case Western Reserve is not necessarily the cheapest school, even with that really great scholarship that you all will be receiving. And so just understanding, "If I do take out additional loans to help cover those costs, am I just gonna be in debt forever?" Or, "How long do I really have to worry about making those payments in order to have that loan paid off?"

Mike Collins: So if we can go to the next slide, Frankie. So in thinking about the cost of the program, graduate aid is relatively simple. And what I mean by that is the government doesn't provide a ton of options in terms of what you'll be able to receive. And so, likewise, we've tried to simplify how everything is gonna be handed out to you. So for graduate students, it's really just the cost of tuition and fees. So that is the only thing that you are actually going to be billed for. But included in your aid eligibility, is also an allowance for living expenses, thinking about what you might need for rent or utilities, or food. If you don't have a medical plan, if you don't have health insurance already, that is something that's required in order for you to go to school. And so we do offer a medical plan, but it is something that can be waived if you have health insurance already. You'll just need to provide that information to the school so we can verify that it's adequate and meets the needs that you need to have. And so typically for graduate students, in thinking about the total cost that you'll need for the program, it's the tuition and fees plus about $23,000, so about $11,500 per semester for those living expenses, the normal fall/spring semester. And then, if you will be taking classes over the summer, there may be... Or there will be a smaller summer living allowance that will be available as well. The summer is not quite as long as the fall and the spring, and so that living allowance for the summer is a bit smaller.

Mike Collins: Okay. So in thinking about covering those costs, you know that with the scholarship, you'll end up owing about $39,000 for the tuition. And you know that you'll be eligible for about $23,000 when it comes to the living expenses, personal expenses, and all of those things. Well, as I said before, it's relatively simple for graduate students. So the government provides only two different types of funding. There is the direct unsubsidized loan, which is guaranteed for any U.S. citizen or permanent resident. You can get up to $20,500 in an academic year. So for Case Western Reserve, it starts with the summer and ends with the spring. So summer, fall, spring. Most students are really just enrolled for that typical fall/spring semester. You do have to submit the FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. So if you've done that for undergrad, if you've done that for your children, if you happen to have them, it's the same FAFSA you'll be filling that out. And as long as you meet those requirements, the FAFSA... And you're a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, you can expect to receive that $20,500.

Mike Collins: Now, we know that that's not gonna be enough. And so the government does offer a credit-based loan that you can borrow as well. And that credit-based loan amount is gonna be the difference between whatever the school costs, so that tuition and fees plus those living allowances, minus any other aid you already have. So whether the tuition was $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, it doesn't matter. That credit-based loan, called the Graduate PLUS loan, is able to be increased or decreased as much as you need it to, up to those costs.

Mike Collins: Now, the PLUS loan, I do have a lot of students who are worried about whether or not they will be approved for the PLUS loan. It is probably one of the easiest loans you'll ever be able to receive. A short, simple way of thinking about it: for the PLUS loan, the government, when they run your credit, they just want to know, have you paid your bills on time? So they're not concerned with whether or not you have a job. They're not concerned with your credit score. They're not concerned with your debt-to-income ratio. What the government is looking for is, have you paid your bills on time? Do you have bankruptcies or foreclosures? Do you have accounts that are in collections? So not necessarily something that's past due, but something that has actually been sent to collections. It does look back five years, but that's really the extent of what that Grad PLUS is looking for. So you are able to pull up your credit report, you are able to take a look at that information ahead of time and see, "Okay. The government is looking for these five or six things. Are these on my credit report?" If they're not, you'll be approved. It's really that simple.

Mike Collins: All right. Next slide. Okay. So now that you know, you've gone out, you looked at your credit report and you've seen, "Okay. I know how much the program is gonna cost. I know how much aid I'm gonna receive. And I see that, okay, I am gonna have to take out some loans to help cover that. I had loans already." Well, any type of federal loan, so any loan that is from the Department of Education, automatically, once you start classes, any payments that would have been due, get paused. They get into a deferment. I know that federal loans right now are already in a payment pause, and that pause, by President Biden's latest announcement, that pause will continue until 60 days after either the Supreme Court makes its ruling on all of the different legal cases that are out there, or 60 days after June 30th. So regardless, you should not be required to make any payments now. That payment pause will continue while you're in school. So from the day that classes start, until the time that classes end, it is automatic in-school deferment. There's no payments due. You can make payments, the same way with the payment pause that's in place right now. You can make payments on a one-off basis and call up the servicer, the company handling your loans, and say, "I want to make a payment. I know that I'm not required, but I want to get rid of some of that interest," or, "I want to pay down some of the principal." You are able to call them up and make a payment on a one-off basis, but that will not restart the payment plan. That will not lock you in to making any type of scheduled payment. So it will be as you want it.

Mike Collins: Private loans, on the other hand, is a little bit less concise, a little bit less consolidated. Because of so many different private lenders that are out there, they are able to make their own rules. They are able to make their own determinations in how they'll handle these. Most private lenders, if you are in school, they will have those payments suspended as well, or they will have an option to allow you to apply to have those payments suspended. It won't be automatic, but that is something, that for most private lenders, you are able to do. You just have to make sure that you're asking them for that information, so that way you know if you need to submit some sort of verification of your enrollment, or if there's something else you might need to provide to them, in order to have those payments stopped.

Mike Collins: All right. Next slide, please. Okay. So this is the part that's really scary for most people: will I be in debt forever? The short answer for that is, No. You won't be in debt forever. Although, I know that for a lot of students, 10 to 25 years seems like a really long time. It will be 10 years as a standard payment. So whenever you take out any federal loans, the loans you took out as undergrad, if you have them, any loans that you will take out as a graduate student, standardly, you will be set up for a 10-year repayment plan. Now, the government does have programs to help students, and the income-based payment is probably one of the most popular ones. It does spread out your payments between 20 to 25 years. For most graduate students, it is gonna be closer to that 25 years for how the payments are spread out. But the payments will be based on how much money you make, and not necessarily how much you owe. And that's really important because as you borrow... If you decide after you finish this program, that you want to move on and do another online engineering program, or you want to go out and do something else, those payments, those loans, those amounts may accumulate. But when you go to start making those payments back, however much you're making at the time, that is what's gonna be used to determine how much your payments are gonna be.

Mike Collins: Now, there's also what's called Public Service Loan Forgiveness. I know that's been in the news quite a lot, although not quite as much lately with everything else that's been going on. But that is another program that's available, and you can combine them together. So you can sign up for those income-based payments, have payments based on the amount of money that you're making, while also enrolling, or using the Public Service Loan Forgiveness. So instead of that standard 20, 25 years for the income-based payments, you can be making those lower payments for actually only 10 years. So that's something that you could definitely do as well.

Mike Collins: Next slide, please. Okay. Now, to make it even easier on you all, the government does have a loan simulator, where you can go out and you can put your information in. Because there's only one federal government, and because they control what those calculations are in terms of how your payments are made, it's actually really accurate for you to go out there and estimate that information. Me and my wife use it every year, just so that way we can be more up to date. And typically, when we use that information... I'll admit, I do round a little differently than the government does. So my payments are typically off by a couple dollars because I round one way and they round another, but it's still just a couple of dollars off.

Mike Collins: So on the left side here, you see the standard repayment information. And so this is a view of... A simplified view of what the government's gonna provide to you. They're gonna ask you how much you make. And what I used was our normal average for a student who is a... For an engineering student, with a... One of our normal engineering students, when they graduate, we expect them to be making somewhere around $90,000-$91,000. So that was the information that I put in. I put in the state of Ohio, and that I was single. And I filled out the information for whether or not I filed taxes, and all of those things. And this is the information that they gave me. So it said based on what I provided them, how much loans I would be borrowing, or the average that I would borrow, which is actually for our students, a little under $100,000 altogether. So combining graduate school with undergrad, about $100,000. It's saying that my payments would be about $1,000 a month, and that I would be making those payments for just under 10 years.

Mike Collins: Now, the Revised Pay As You Earn, is one of those income-based options. I told the calculator, the simulator, that I wanted the lowest payment possible... Lowest monthly payment possible. So this was the option that it provided to me. So my payments would start off with those same numbers, the same income, the same indebtedness. It gives you all of this information together, allows you to compare it. My payments would be starting off under $600. And another thing the calculator does is, it allows you to estimate what your raises might be each year.

Mike Collins: I used 2%, because that's standard for a lot of places, assuming that you're just at the same place and you're not moving around where you can probably get a lot more if you were to do that. And so it's estimating that, "Okay. I'm starting off at just under $600 for my payments. By the time I'm done, I'd be paying just under $800," so still less than that standard amount. "But over the course of time, I would have ended up paying just under $20,000 more because of the interest. I'd be paying less money upfront, but I'm paying it over a longer amount of time, and so that's where that interest builds up."

Mike Collins: Now, I didn't mention this before, but for every income-based payment plan, there is an automatic forgiveness that's built in after 20... After, typically, about 25 years. So once you get through 25 years, whatever is left over on the loan, that forgiveness amount will be... Or that's what the forgiveness amount will be. If I had told it that I was making $30,000 a year, maybe you decide to go work for a small non-profit, or start your own business and you're not pulling in enough money to begin with, payments actually do go down to $0. So working with some of our dental students, medical students, where, to be frank, it costs about $100,000 a year in order for those students when they have their tuition and fees and everything else, so they are borrowing a little bit more, they could still have that $0 a month payment. And some of them do, depending upon where they go to work. So there's a full range in terms of what you'll be able to see, and also play around with to give you different options.

Mike Collins: Next slide, please. Thank you. Now, I mentioned before that public loan forgiveness, and how that would stop the payments after 10 years. The calculator, the loan simulator, gives you the option to put that information in as well. You can tell it whether you're working for a non-profit or government organization, and be able to see, "Okay. This is how my payments will be affected." So the standard payment doesn't change, same information. The Revised Pay As You Earn, so that income-based payment plan that had the lowest monthly payment, that initial information didn't change either. Still the same amounts for the loans, and for the income, and where I live. But you can see that how much I'm paying, it starts off the same, but it ends a lot sooner. That payoff date is now November of '32 instead of November of '39. Instead of $137,000, I'm only paying off $77,000. So of that $100,000 that I would have borrowed altogether, graduate, undergrad, everything together, I'm only paying off $77,000 of it. And then another $50,000 because of interest, is going to be forgiven. The added benefit for public loan forgiveness, is that anything that's forgiven through this manner, is automatic right now, is going to be tax-free. So you don't have to worry about anything there.

Mike Collins: The normal forgiveness for the income-based payments, as of right now, it is set up to be taxable income. These programs only went into effect as of about 2010, so it has not been 25 years yet, so no one has really seen that forgiveness come through. But the general consensus is that, similar to a lot of other things that happen when you talk about the legislature in Congress, whether it's state or whether it's federal, as you get closer to that date and as people start to see some of those things, they are expecting some of that information to change, they are expecting some movement, they are expecting some things to happen. No one really knows what's gonna happen in the future, but as of right now, that forgiveness after that 25 years, it is expected to be taxable. So just depending upon how much you might have, that will really influence whether or not that's a good option for you as well.

Mike Collins: Okay. So that brings us to the end of my part of the presentation. There's a couple of different sites there for... If you're not sure if you have loans, or how much loans you have, or what the interest rates are, studentaid.gov, you can log on to that site and on the homepage, it will give you all of that information. And when it comes to repayment, your loan servicer is gonna be the best place to go. So again, assuming that you don't know who that is, studentaid.gov will give you their information, their contact information, their website, it'll give you everything you need. And then, we do have... The government has its own student loan support center if you have questions. And we do have an external loans office that works with our graduate students in making sure that documents are set up correctly, or if you have questions about anything that I've spoken about, they can really go through and make sure that you understand those details.

Francesca Chaba: Sure. And then, I'll just talk a little bit more about the admissions requirements and deadlines for the program. So I'll just direct your attention over here to the deadline. So the deadline for our online master's programs in engineering, is actually right at the end of this week. So if you're interested in starting an application for the spring, there's still enough time. But you would have to work quickly, which is fine. I've had students start applications just a couple of days before they were due, and we've been able to get them through the process, and they have been able to start in that next term. So that's something to keep in mind as well. If that sounds a little bit too fast for your timeline, totally fine. We have our summer date as well. The summer priority application deadline is March 18th. The final deadline is April 3rd. And classes would start May 8th. The application for all of our terms of 2023 are all open currently, so whichever feels best for you to go ahead and apply, that sounds great to me. Like I said, I am typically reachable during all business hours, so if you have any questions, I would love to speak with you.

Francesca Chaba: When it comes to the requirements to apply for our programs, we just have a couple here. So there would be the Bachelor of Science in Engineering, would meet the requirements for admission to the program. So that just means that if you have a degree in engineering, from a coursework standpoint, we wouldn't be looking for anything additional from you regarding eligibility for the program. If you don't have an engineering degree, you would be required to demonstrate completed coursework in chemistry, physics, and calculus. That's the minimum requirements we'd be looking for, just depending on the program. Some of our programs do require additional completed coursework beyond that. That's why it's best just to reach out to me so we're able to talk about that more, and I'm able to give you the best information possible.

Francesca Chaba: So like the next point says, if you have additional information... Excuse me, are looking for additional information about qualifications, just feel free to reach out to me. Sometimes, students have a degree that's maybe same coursework to engineering, but not quite engineering, and just need some more information overall. I'm happy to answer any additional questions you may have. We're also looking for around a 3.0 GPA overall, in order to qualify for the program. Like I mentioned, just depending on some other circumstances, we're able to be slightly flexible on that. So definitely just give me a call if you have any questions.

Francesca Chaba: Currently, we are not requiring GRE scores, which would typically only be required for our Master of Science students. So that's something to keep in mind as you apply as well. That is currently not required for this coming semester. And then we're working, just on a semester-to-semester basis, to evaluate the need for GRE, and we can guarantee that it's not required for the next start date, which would be our spring term. At this time, we're also looking for two letters of recommendation, as well as a personal statement. And if you completed college outside of the US, and your primary language of instruction was not English, we would be looking for language testing scores as well.

Francesca Chaba: So those are just some things to keep in mind if you're considering the program. If you have some more questions about financial aid, then I would direct you to the financial aid office. They are excellent. I mentioned earlier, that I actually reached out to them myself for questions on behalf of students. Had a wonderful experience there. If you have more questions about the scholarship offered through the program, then you can reach right out to me 'cause that is handled internally through our programs, or any more questions about the application process itself, getting your materials in, or even if you're hoping to apply before that December deadline for the spring term. So I'm happy to answer any of those for you.

Francesca Chaba: That's all I have regarding this final slide. And you'll get an email from us if you've attended tonight, with some more contact information. Any final thoughts from Mike or Karen?

Mike Collins: I would say, when it comes to financial aid, it's not as scary as people make it out to be. Ask if you have questions, and let us help you through the process. That's what we're here for.

Francesca Chaba: Definitely. And I second that. And I also will say as well, if you have questions about your eligibility for our engineering programs, just reach out, and we're happy to talk things through with you. And my goal as an advisor, is to make sure that you are as qualified as possible when you apply for our program. So if we're talking through and there's ways that I could see that you might be more qualified, we can make a plan to meet those requirements before you go ahead and start the application, or continue your application, or anything like that. So I think the bottom line here is just reach out if you need help, and we're here to help you. That's what we're here for. Other than that, I believe that that's all I have. Any other thoughts?

Francesca Chaba: Okay. I think that that's all for tonight. Thank you for everyone who attended. Like I said, you'll be receiving communication from us with some follow-up regarding the webinar itself. And have a great rest of your night. Thank you so much for attending. Bye.