daycare/financial aid

Does anyone know if you can get financial aid (loans or grants) to cover daycare?

[PrincessFiona]

Kristen,

If memory serves, financial aid calculations are done based on your dependents, financial needs (which would include childcare) and your status (full-time/part-time student).

Check out the FAFSA website ... you will likely qualify for the maximum in subsidized/unsubsidized loans. If you don't have a degree you may also qualify for a pell grant.

Buyer beware...you may need to sit out a year so that you can be "in-state".

I think that childcare need go into the formula for determining loan eligibility.

I don't know the details, but after we had our first child, DH went to financial aid with a letter from our daycare stating how much daycare costs were going to be and they adjusted his aid to loan him the full amount for the coming year.

I'll be staying at home once I have #2--financial aid told him that they'd adjust his aid to compensate him for the fact that I won't have an income anymore so that we can *just* make things stretch enough. I like to pretend that we don't have to pay it back eventually...

[Rapunzel]

At my husband's medical school they would take into account outside childcare providers when calculating financial aid. The interesting part was that medical students whose spouses were the child's primary caretaker got LESS financial aid than those whose spouses worked and paid someone else to take care of their children. Go figure.

Jennifer