Scholarships/Ways to Pay for DPT School!

[mrleroyfashion123]

I was just wondering if any of you have found good websites or resources for finding ways to pay for school! It's SO expensive and I would love to find ways to knock down the price! I feel like so many scholarships out there are for undergrad! Thank you 🙂

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[Melanie726]

If you do a little research on here you could compile a list of school that give out scholarships. I couldn't give you the full list but off the top of my head there's:
Boston University, MGH, Northeastern, Simmons, Drexel, Arcadia, Stoney Brook, and I think Columbia and NYU

I'm sure there are more... but as a general rule there aren't too many schools that give them out.

 

[Watson27]

Adding Delaware to the list above.

As Melanie said, your best bet is to get a scholarship from the program. There aren't many national scholarships for PT students. And they are usually fairly small awards; $1000-$5000 one time award, etc. There are some national scholarships for health/medical students, but you usually are competing against MD, DO, pharm, etc. students.

It's worth contacting schools early and asking about what scholarships are available and if you would be competitive enough to receive one. Some programs do not advertise the awards, or only give them to applicants who attended undergad at their institution. Some schools offer the scholarships upfront in the acceptance letter, while other schools wait until they have finalized their incoming class and then award them.

Along with scholarships, many programs have separate assistantships or fellowships. Depending on the program, in return for 10-20 hours of work per week, you might receive a stipend and partial or even full tuition scholarships. Being from Ohio, I know that Ohio University has a great GA program that you apply for once you have accepted a spot.

 

[mrleroyfashion123]

Thank you! I've already been accepted to 4 schools: Concordia University Wisconsin, Midwestern Downers Grove, Northern Illinois University, and Rosalind Franklin. I'm still waiting on Carroll in Waukesha, WI. I was hoping that there would be some great outside source that I was missing lol a couple of the schools do offer assistantships, which is nice.

 

[DesertPT]

Also realize that the institutions that offer large sums of money in the form of institutional scholarships are almost always the pricey private schools. State schools don't really have a problem attracting students due to the cost factor and don't really have any incentive to offer more than one or two thousand here and there.

 

[foodislife]

Also, be sure that you understand the new federal loan repayment rules regarding the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) repayment plan. If your total loan amount is above 100K, and you qualify for PAYE, additional loans may not change your payment as much as you think because your payments are capped at 10% of your discretionary income. It's just something to keep in mind when deciding to work during school.

 

[DesertPT]

Also, be sure that you understand the new federal loan repayment rules regarding the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) repayment plan. If your total loan amount is above 100K, and you qualify for PAYE, additional loans may not change your payment as much as you think because your payments are capped at 10% of your discretionary income. It's just something to keep in mind when deciding to work during school.

True...if you don't really care about ever having the loans paid off, you can pretty much just borrow absolutely ungodly amounts of money from the government and then commit 10-15% of your discretionary income for the next 20-25 years....obviously people who want to be PTs and only get into an extremely overpriced private school don't have a lot of choice, and I don't blame them...but thus we can see how the exponential rise in college tuition has contributed to stiffling the economy...or at least some say...we also see how those of us who do pay our 7%+ interest on our loans get to pay for all the private college humanities master's degrees that have defaulted...that's obviously a sweeping generalization...but the way that higher education is paid for in the US in the modern age is not a system I'm particularly fond of.