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Other ways to pay

Community service

Community service allows you to make a difference in the lives of those needing the most help.

While community service programs can give you some money to pay for college, that's nothing compared to the experiences you gain, the satisfaction you feel, and the friends you make while helping others.

AmeriCorps

AmeriCorps is a network of national service programs that engages more than 70,000 Americans each year in intensive service to meet critical needs in education, public safety, health, and the environment. Through AmeriCorps, students can receive money to help pay for school. Serve full time, usually for a term lasting 10–12 months, to be eligible for an education award of up to $4,725. Working part time offers eligibility for a partial award.

For more information, visit AmeriCorps.

Learn and Serve America

This national service grant program combines school curriculum and community service. Grants are used to create new programs or provide training and development to staff, faculty, and volunteers.

For more details, visit the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Peace Corps

Over 7,700 Peace Corps volunteers are serving in 72 countries, working to bring clean water to communities, teach children, help start new small businesses, and stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Volunteers receive intensive language and cross-cultural training to become part of the communities where they live. They speak the local language and adapt to the cultures and customs of the people they work with.

Learn more about the Peace Corps.

Military service

Learn how serving your country can help pay for school.

National Health Service Corps

"The National Health Service Corps Loan Repayment Program provides $50,000 (or the outstanding balance of qualifying student loans if it is less than $50,000), tax free, to primary care medical, dental and mental health clinicians in exchange for two years of service at an approved site in a Health Professional Shortage Area. Upon completion of the service commitment, clinicians may be eligible to apply for additional support for extended service."

See if you are eligible for the National Health Service Corps Loan Repayment Program.

National Defense Education Act

If you become a full-time teacher in an elementary or secondary school that serves students from low-income families you could have a portion of your federal Perkins loans forgiven.

Contact your school district's administration to see which schools qualify under this program.

More opportunities for volunteering

"Without Sallie Mae, neither my wife nor I would have been able to improve our lives."

I entered the New York City Teaching Fellows. [It offers teachers] a Master’s in Education and a teaching certificate while employing them as a full time teacher in a high-needs school.

Since it was an AmeriCorps program, the government paid off most of the interest that had accrued on my student loans during my time in the program. They also cut me a check to help me defray some education expenses. This check went straight to our student loans which at that point hovered around $50,000.

Once my two years were finished, we decided to work overseas. We accepted a position in rural Mali.

We chose to focus on our debts. Over the next three years, we sent as much as we could afford to our student loans until, at last, they were paid off.

Without Sallie Mae, neither my wife nor I would have been able to improve our lives. The student loan money we received enabled us to attain our goals. Although the payments were a burden at times, through hard work, perseverance, and frugal living we are now debt free and living the life we have always dreamed of. Thank you Sallie Mae.

—Mark R., Valencia, Venezuela

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