I’m about to start graduate school, and qualified for a large amount of work-study. However, I’ve already gotten a part-time job at the school in the field I worked in before going back to school. This job pays significantly better and offers more hours than the available work-study jobs, but it isn’t part of the work-study program largely for those same reasons (they have limited federal funds available).

As far as I can tell, the main advantage of work-study is that it doesn’t count as income on my FAFSA next year when determining my financial aid eligibility. Is there any way for me to count my current job as work-study for FAFSA purposes without it being federally funded?

We’re not sure as to whether your current job would count as work-study for FAFSA purposes but here are the two best links I know of on that topic.

http://www2.ed.gov/programs/fws/index.html
http://studentaid.ed.gov/types/work-study

Also, if you have not already done so, you should pose these questions to your school’s financial aid office as they might have a clearer picture of the work-study rules that we do.

Best,

James Jarvis
Communications Director
Heather Jarvis, Student Loan Expert LLC