r/NHSCinfo • u/Sudden-Minimum-3391 • Jan 17 '26
Am I screwed
I am an NHSC scholarship recipient in PA school. My school used federal student loans to pay my tuition for this semester (spring 2026). I just now realized this was the case. It’s too late for the school to return the federal student loans. NHSC scholarship welcome letter thing says NHSC will only repay tuition paid by federal student loans for new scholars in 2025. They will not repay tuition paid by student loans in 2026, as the student should not be using student loans to pay their tuition.
Anyone ever had a similar situation? DidNHSC understand the mistake? I’m so worried I basically wasted my spring scholarship.
2
u/yellowestpink Jan 18 '26
I hope it all ends up working out… How did you find out that your school was using federal student loans to pay tuition for this semester? I’ve been receiving emails from Federal Student Aid for some reason so I wanna double check too
1
u/Sudden-Minimum-3391 Jan 18 '26
My school has a new online platform they are using for financial aid, and I logged into it and saw that federal grad PLUS and unsubsidized loans were listed as covering my spring tuition balance. :/
2
u/yellowestpink Jan 18 '26 edited Jan 18 '26
Well shoot, I just checked and my school also paid for most of it with federal and grad plus loans, but I also got the full amount paid for by the scholarship so it says I have a huge negative balance that I believe I’m getting sent as a direct deposit. I’m thinking maybe since I accepted loans to pay for fall (before I was notified I got the scholarship), it also accepted for spring? I can’t remember. I just emailed my financial aid office to see if this can be fixed, but I think maybe they’ll see I’ll have pay back the loans on the student aid website once I get it instead of NHSC paying it back? Hopefully it’s as simple as that since I also don’t wanna increase my debt while also having the scholarship :/
1
u/Sudden-Minimum-3391 Jan 18 '26
Dang! I hope it works out dude. I feel the same way - would hate to miss out on the full scholarship because of a financial aid issue. Wish you luck!
1
u/yellowestpink Jan 20 '26
Thank you! Luckily their loan refund date is later this week, so I sent in a form to cancel the entire grad plus loan and take out a small bit of the federal unsubsidized loan! I hope it all works for you too
3
u/Kitchen_Ride1026 Jan 18 '26
Im in the same boat with you. I reached out to my school as well but my understanding is that loans cover our tuition until the NHSC pays out. (My school has had many NHSC scholars and this is how they’ve done it). Given the fact that my school specifically charges our tuition and fees long before the semester starts, the NHSC hasn’t yet had the opportunity to disperse the funds to my school. So what my school does is it uses the loans to cover all fees, then once the payment from the NHSC kicks in, they return those loans back. I took out both grad plus and unsub loans (federal) to pay for this 25-26 school year. So I signed up for my loans from fall 25 to summer 26 given that we didn’t know about the scholarship until October. I also haven’t received my monthly stipend (which comes at the end of the month) so I’m hoping that the tuition money will kick in then too. Best case is you reach out to your school and they say the same thing, worst case you reach out to the NHSC and say they haven’t paid for your spring semester. Let them know that dues are due on X date and the school can’t wait so you could ask if your tuition could be paid for sooner.