Getting an Education Grant Can Help You Pay for College

lab fees, living expenses, and even entertainment and spending money are very real expenses that add up quickly. When one is expected to devote the vast majority of time and attention to learning, there is often not much energy left to earn the money to cover the expenses.

Fortunately, many forms of financial aid programs can help ease the financial burden, freeing up energies for the student to devote to studying instead of to counting pennies.

One outstanding way of financing college is with an education grant. Unlike loans, grants don’t have to be repaid in kind after graduation. Each entity offering grant money has a different set of circumstances surrounding it and it can be quite worthwhile to explore all which may apply.

Education grant money is often offered to students enrolled in a particular field of study. The entities offering these grants fund the grants with the plan in mind that the student will work in the given field after graduation.

The medical profession is one that offers education grants to budding doctors. They do so in order to offset the dearth of general practitioners in rural and other underprivileged areas that are apparently not too attractive to many doctors although the need for them is great.

In order to secure such an education grant in the medical field, a medical student receives money for medical school in return for the promise to spend his or her first few years out of school working as a physician in an area underserved by the medical community.

A television situation comedy of the 1990s is a perfect illustration of how a medical education grant works. In “Northern Exposure,” the recent medical school graduate / star of the show, who had been raised in New York City, was sent to the wilds of Alaska to serve as the doctor to the quirky villagers in a location so remote only one single-engine bush plane provided transportation to and from the village, and only when the weather permitted air travel.

Life here seemed so bizarre to the doctor, and he to the villagers, that he immediately began counting the days until his grant commitment expired and he could return to civilization and get a real job. The show was so popular it won many awards and ran for several years.

School administrators know that not everyone has the money at hand to fully fund a college degree on their own. They encourage students to seek assistance from any number of financial aid sources, including education grants.