CRNA School and Financial Aid

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Specializes in ICU.

Hey all,

I'm starting my CRNA program next month. After crunching the numbers, it doesn't seem like we were awarded enough financial aid to live on. I've never used aid before, so this is a first and a bit scary. Anyone have any advice about financial aid? Anyone take out or explore private loans? Anyone else feel like it's not enough to live on? My program is in Miami, and it seems as though we are only allotted about $1600 a month to live on in Miami. With rent costing about $1000/month, how does the remaining $600 cover food, health insurance, phone, transportation, gas, electric, etc. Anyone else's aid package more generous?

Any insight or advice is appreciated! Thanks!

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Specializes in ICU-CCRN, CVICU, SRNA.

no, thats pretty good actually. My program exhausted my whole financial aid package. I have 0$ to live on.

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Specializes in Nurse Anesthesia, ICU, ED.

I dont have much experience with the private loan side, but you can ask the school about GRADPlus loans, also ask the financial aid office if you can submit an adjustment form basically asking for more money. the form allows you to demonstrate additional need if you have fees/books/living expenses beyond what the school has established as "normal".

Try searching fastweb for scholarships. I don't know much about FL, but in NC there are state sponsored grants and loans I applied for (and received one!). Also, the program I am in receives federal traineeship money. this accounted for ~1k a year.

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Did you get GradPLUS loans on top of your Federal Subsidized/Unsubsidized loans? I took out the max on both GradPLUS and the Sub/Unsub loans, and that leaves me an excess of $5000 per quarter to live on, which translates to about $1660/month. Its not much money, and probably not the standard of living you're used to with ICU RN pay, but its only for a short time. My goal is to use the excess loan money for rent and NECESSITIES. I'm going to school with about 14k saved up in the bank, so I'm going to try to use that for all the incidentals. Hopefully it works, I start next month, we'll see how it goes.

If realistic rent is $1000/month you're either going to need to get a roommate, have some money saved up to help with your expenses, or maybe move out of Miami to a less expensive area.

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I suggest a $1 florida lotto ticket :-)

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