GRADUATE SCHOOL SCHOLARSHIPS

Are you really sure you want to go to college even longer?

Some people can’t get enough of school—they call them graduate students. Lucky for them that there are plenty of scholarships for graduate school.

When you are looking for scholarships for graduate school one of your main goals is to stay out of debt. Or maybe it is to stay out of further debt. Nobody wants those burdensome school loans hanging over their head when they finally decide to call it a day and leave the college campus for good to pursue the rest of their life.

Let’s face it: getting a quality education does not come cheap. By some estimates the same scholarships for graduate school that would have funded your entire education a generation ago may only cover sixty percent of expenses today. Costs are going up.

So what’s a starving graduate student supposed to do? There is hope. Having an advanced degree automatically puts you in a higher salary range. That’s not a bad thing, right? Any debt you take on will be easier to pay back when you are finished. Still, it’s not like you’re looking to add some student debt to your life.

So what can you do? First, do not be a stranger to the financial aid advisor at your college or university. Don’t be a nuisance, but you should make regular visits to see if there’s anything new that might help you out.

If you’re in graduate school studying one of the STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields of study you are in luck as well. American corporations are hiring computer scientists from India because of the shortage here. This is true in virtually every STEM profession—there just are not enough good people. This will make demand for your services high when you get out of school.

Of course, if you’re like most graduate students, you will pay the bills by working as a teaching or research assistant. There are fellowships to be had—some of them worth a lot of money—but they are relatively few and far between.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Again, employ the same philosophy here as with other financial aid, that is, never give up. But, heck, you probably know that; you’re in graduate school and you didn’t get there by being a quitter.

What are the fastest-growing sectors to put that graduate degree to good use? On the surface this may not sound like an important question. After all, you’re in graduate school, you’ve made the plunge already. You are not shifting your education to accommodate the marketplace.

But here’s the rub—those jobs with future growth are generally the same ones that offer scholarships for graduate school. The areas expected to see the biggest growth are in the STEM fields, the helping professions and finance.

Mental health counselors will be the number one growth job between now and 2016. Other areas of growth are for marriage and family therapists, physical therapists and personal financial advisors.