Category Archives: Education

These posts offer advice on education and financial aid.

09.16.08
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How to find grad schools

Even the savviest, most passionate grad school seeker may get a crush on one or two famous grad schools, and have a hard time generating a “long list.”

But most admissions professionals will tell you it’s a good idea to apply to several schools (including—eek, I hate to say it—”safety” schools) to be sure you get in somewhere. I am not sure that I agree—you may want to work for a few more years in your field and apply again to your top choice schools when you are more established.

However, in case it’s useful, here are the main ways of fleshing out your list of prospective schools:

1. Attend the Idealist.org Graduate Degree Fair for the Public Good or another graduate admissions fair in a city near you. No, this isn’t a commercial, it really is a good way to find schools. If you go to a fair, I challenge you to approach at least three schools that you haven’t heard of, or you wouldn’t think of applying to. Let the admissions professional know your plans for the future, and see if they surprise you.

This week: Toronto (9/18) and Washington, DC (9/19). Next week, Philadelphia (9/22). See the rest of the season schedule here.

2. Informational interviewing. Talk with professors and professionals in your field, and find out how they got where they are now, if they even went to grad school, and where they would suggest you go.

3. School associations! Many different types of schools, from international affairs to business, are affiliated with an association of similar schools. You can learn about many different programs and the degree itself through the association. We don’t have a list of school associations online that I can link to (I will work on that) but do take a look at our grad fair cosponsors, which include many types. Other school groupings include schools that offer to match the AmeriCorps Ed Award, and schools that partner with Teach For America or Peace Corps to extend benefits to participants.

4. Conversations with graduate admissions personnel, who are well-versed in the characteristics of peer schools. Some schools’s admissions staff even travel and attend recruiting events together regularly. Whenever you have a chance to speak with admissions officers, share with them what you are looking for in your ideal school or degree. They should be able to let you know what other schools to look into, and whether or not their school is a good fit for you. If their school is a good fit, be sure to ask for guidance in navigating the application and admissions process.

5. Research online through sites like Peterson’s, Gradschools.com, and Idealist.org (we hope to launch a directory of public interest grad schools in 2009, but for now, search for “organizations” using key words like “graduate school,” “social work,” “MPA,” etc.)

Best of luck, and read more about grad school on our Public Service Graduate Education Resource Center!

09.08.08
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Those pesky student loans

Amy is off to New York to see Obama, McCain, and maybe President Clinton at the Service Nation Summit, while I’m stuck in Portland contemplating the nuances of financial aid. At the least the weather is as close to perfect as can be.

I learned more about the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. That’s the new law that allows people working at nonprofits to have their student loans forgiven after 10 years of steady payments, starting from October 2007. (One of the catches is that you need to have Direct Loans, but if you don’t, you can consolidate.)

For me the downside of the program is that if you don’t have huge loans, at the end of ten years of steady payments there won’t be much of a balance to be forgiven. Still, getting any student loan balance off the books is a wonderful thing and should be taken advantage of.

But then I learned about another program called Income-Based Repayment, with huge implications for AmeriCorps and VISTA members, as well as others earning low pay while working in the nonprofit sector.

It comes online in July 2009.

In a nutshell, the Income-Based Repayment program sets your loan repayment amount at a rate of 15 percent of your discretionary income. Without getting too much into the math, if you are below the poverty line, your payments could be $0 per month. Sure interest will accrue, but the idea is if you serve in AmeriCorps or VISTA for a year or two and hold a low-paying nonprofit job for the next nine or ten years, you could get your entire loan debt erased without making a single payment in that time. (You should check the list of qualifying loans. If you don’t have them, consider consolidating.)

The trick with either one of these programs is to start planning now if you think you might be taking advantage of these programs.

I will write more later about the pros and cons of the Income-Based Repayment program vs. the forbearance CNCS offers to AmeriCorps and VISTA members.

Update 11/07, from Put Barber, Senior Researcher at Idealist.org:

The Department of Education has published final regulations for the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007 (CCRAA). This Act provides for loan forgiveness for full time employees of “public service organizations.” Nonprofit full-time employees (at least 30 hours a week) who are making monthly college loan repayments can count each month of nonprofit employment towards the 120 months of payments needed to qualify for forgiveness of the remaining loan balance, beginning with payments after October 1, 2007. Current nonprofit employees with outstanding student loans of more than nine years future duration can look forward to an end to the loan payments in after about nine more years of work for nonprofits.


The National Council of Nonprofit Organizations (NCNA), along with other national groups, worked throughout the rule-drafting process to extend this provision to employees of all 501(c)(3) organizations. For more information, see a Q & A on the NCNA website.

09.06.08
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Grad school for social change

This week, the Idealist.org Graduate Degree Fairs for the Public Good kick off the 2008 fall tour on September 10th in New York City!

(Please note that due to the Service Nation Summit‘s Presidential Candidates’s Forum on Sept. 11 at Columbia, the venue for the NY fair has changed!)

The fairs bring together graduate schools that focus on positive societal change, and public service professionals– like you? –who want more education to further their careers.

If you are thinking about grad school, it’s one of the best ways we can think of to meet staff from some of the country’s top schools in degrees ranging from nonprofit & business management and social work, to public policy & administration, public interest law, public health, journalism, international affairs and more.

If you don’t live near one of the cities where the fairs will come this year, check out the Idealist.org Public Service Graduate Education Resource Center with lots of resources for going back to school. Read here for information specifically for service corps alumni.

Looking for experience before going to grad school?

Graduate admissions staff recognize service corps programs as a great way to get valuable, practical experience in the field to prepare for grad school.

If you are considering participating in a service program, know that several programs have benefits that await you after you are finished with your term.

Programs funded through AmeriCorps offer the Eli Segal AmeriCorps Education Award; the amount varies depending on the term of service, but a full term typically means $4,725. (The amount hasn’t been increased in a over a decade, though RPCV Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn) and others in Congress are working to rectify that with the AmeriCorps Act of 2008.) The ed award is held by the National Service Trust until you are ready to use it, and can go towards tuition at most schools, or for student loans. Dozens of grad schools match the ed award so that your award may be doubled if you enroll at those schools.

Teach For America, an AmeriCorps program, has also fostered partnerships with many top graduate schools around the country that benefit TFA Corps members through application deferments, scholarships and ed award matches, and application fee waivers.

As we have written about before on this blog, Peace Corps also has two programs, Masters International and Fellows USA. The latter is specifically for people who have returned from Peace Corps service already.

A pretty good comparison (including education benefits) of some of the more famous service corps programs can be found in Chapter Five (PDF) of the Idealist.org Guide to Nonprofit Careers. Also check out Equal Justice Works blog about public interest law. Other associations of social-impact grad schools can be found among Idealist’s grad fair cosponsors.

Do you know of other benefits for service corps alumni not mentioned here? We’d love to hear about them!

Also Idealist is still looking for grad school bloggers! Click here to see if blogging for us sounds compelling to you!

Also note that many grad schools offer benefits to service corps alumni that aren’t through official partnerships with the service programs. It’s always a good idea to ask at your target institution.

08.20.08
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Service alumni needed to blog about grad school

Bloggers Needed for Idealist.org
School seekers and students write about grad school

Tomorrow’s civic leaders learn about grad school through Idealist’s events and resources.

Soon they can learn from each other.

In fall 2008, Idealist will link its Public Service Graduate Education Resource Center to bloggers who take on grad school.

The resource center is a collection of articles and advice about researching and choosing schools, applying and financing a degree, and more. The resource center will not host the new blogs, but link to blogs elsewhere on the web.

Types of bloggers we are looking for
We aim to look at grad school from 9 different lenses

Current or prospective…
1. Participant in a term-of-service program (Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Teach For America, etc.) who is taking advantage of an educational benefit associated with service2. International student pursuing a graduate degree in the United States who is a resident of the United States and intends to stay (immigrant)
3. International student pursuing a graduate degree in the United States who is a nonresident/alien who plans to leave the United States upon graduation (F1 Visa)
4. U.S. citizen pursuing a degree outside the United States
5. Grad student enrolled in a joint degree program
6. Part-time grad student working full-time
7. Doctoral Candidate
8. Undergraduate applying to grad school, with the aim of enrolling the fall after college graduation
9. Masters degree candidate

To learn more, go to http://tinyurl.com/idealistblogger!

07.31.08
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Pushing the Outward Bound

Outward Bound provides an opportunity for former AmeriCorps and VISTA members to use their education awards on something different (other than student loans and standard college costs).

This nonprofit org provides an array of wilderness-based courses ranging from canoeing to backpacking to mountaineering and others, and the courses are offered in locations across the country. In addition to accepting the education award, scholarships are available. The Outward Bound website also includes a state-by-state set of job listings.