I Have Several Post 9/11 GI Bill Questions – Can You Help Clarify These for Me?
Q: Long story short. Vet, 100% Eligibility, CT resident, Attending UConn. I’m considering using Leadership Scholar Program to attend an out of state school in 2015. I fully understand the Yellow Ribbon program. However, I don’t fully understand these three terms that I see when looking at a particular website:
==> Maximum Charge Per Credit Hour
==> Maximum Fees per term
==> GI Bill Cap ($19,198.31)
Based on the above three terms, I have the following questions:
1. When attending an out of state school, do you use your home state or school attending state rates to calculate help you will get?
2. How long is a term? 1 semester or 1 traditional year?
3. Say you are attending a school in state X with $100 credit hour max and $10,000 term max. You are taking 12 credits worth of class.
Cost Per credit for the school is $200. Will the GI Bill only pay for $1200 of the $2400 you owe because of the credit hour cap? If so, whats the point of a Term max, You would have to take hundreds of credit hours (impossible) to reach the max.
4. Credit hour Max vs Term max- to use several state with extreme circumstances…
A.-D.C. has $265 credit hour max and a $310 term max. So D.C. only pays for $310 dollars worth of schooling?
B.-Utah has $238 credit hour max and an $85,000 term max. Will Utah pay up to $85,000 dollars a year for schooling?
5. What’s this GI Bill cap. If its $19,000 then why does Utah say $85,000?
6. I will be attending an out of state college. So is the easy answer to all this, I will receive up to $19,000 in help…Period?
7. CT has a Credit hour max of $543 with a term max of $2660. The GI Bill already paid for over $10,000 worth of schooling for me this year alone (UConn is $363 per credit hour). So these “Maxes” are just BS…?
As you can see I am clearly and deeply confused about this entire convoluted backwards system. Thanks in advance for the help, I will probably have follow up questions that I forgot to write down. Sweet baby Jesus I need your help!
A: You are confused by what you are reading because most of it is out of date and no longer applies. The term and maximum caps per state went out in 2011 with the advent and passage of the GI Bill 2.0 legislation. So none of the terms/max information is relevant. With that out the window, it should make things a lot clearer. So let’s get to your questions that still apply, striking out #3 and 4.
The answer to question #1 is the tuition rate for the school you are attending applies. The Post 9/11 GI Bill would pay up to the resident tuition rate, so if you are paying non-resident rates, you would have to make up the difference.
For question #2, a term can be a semester, quarter, a year or the length of a particular program. It depends on how your school classifies a term.
The GI Bill cap you are referring to in question #5 applies if you are attending a private school. Right now, the VA could pay up to $19,198.31 per year for you to attend a private school. If attending a public school in your home state, the Post 9/11 GI Bill would pay up to 100% of your tuition. I think this also answers question #6.
And finally for question #7, as you can see by my answers of your previous questions, and if you take out the max/term cap portion, the system is not as convoluted as it appears when you were trying to wrestle with what turns out to be ancient history as far as the Post 9/11 GI Bill is concerned.
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Stumble!
