Dollars and Cents

First things first, I was awarded the "Women In Technology" scholarship!!!  Yay me!!!  Like most WGU scholarships, this $2,000 award directly from WGU is dispersed at $500/term over 4 terms.  I was notified via email 6 days after my phone interview with the scholarship committee representative.  The 2 factors that I suspect contributed most to this are first that I've worked in the male dominated field of IT a total of over 14 years and second that I coach a Girl Scout First Lego League robotics team, so I am passing along an interest in technology and building the next generation of technology minded women.  Yes, being a Girl Scout pays off, spread the word.

The financial aid sections of my enrollment portal finally lit up with some to do items, including setting the amount of financial aid I wish to receive.  I set it for the cost of tuition/fees, minus my scholarship, plus the cost of a new laptop.  Going forward, I will only accept financial aid for the amount of tuition and fees.  This will keep my total student loan repayment as low as possible when this is all over.

I haven't had a new PC in 8 years, and while the beast I built is still going strong for my everyday needs, it is a bit behind the times and at 70 lbs (it's a giant behemoth gaming tower), certainly is not portable.  Time for a beefed up laptop with all the modern features and enough capacity to dual boot in a different operating system if necessary for hands-on course work.  My "proctored exam station" will be my big PC in the basement.

My first 2 terms (semesters) are all financially figured out.  I am taking out in student loans the cost of the first 2 terms plus a computer.  WGU costs $3485/semester, I have $500 in scholarship and up to $3000 annual reimbursement from work for each term (one term is in 2018, the other in 2019), which covers my first two terms entirely.  At the end of my first year the only thing that will be on my student loan account will be the amount I used for a new computer.  These will certainly be the cheapest 2 terms of my college career.

Going forward into next year, term 3 will have a $500 scholarship, and I'll apply for a local $1000 scholarship, so I'll have additional loan amount of net $2-3K.  Term 4 will be a new year (2020) and will be the same as this first term, $500 scholarship and $3000 reimbursement from work.  There will be 2-3 additional terms beyond this.  I will hunt and apply for additional scholarships/grants along the way, but between WGU's low tuition, my current scholarship and $3K annual tuition reimbursement from my employer, this should be a relatively low cost investment compared to traditional Bachelors degrees and other online programs.  At this point I estimate my final net student loan due to be about $8,000.