{"id":119,"date":"2017-03-24T16:03:45","date_gmt":"2017-03-24T20:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.168.1.112\/storybank\/?p=119"},"modified":"2017-03-24T16:56:50","modified_gmt":"2017-03-24T20:56:50","slug":"alejandro-brown-hunter-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/alejandro-brown-hunter-college\/","title":{"rendered":"Alejandro Brown, Hunter College"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-120 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/alejandro-hunter-storybank.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"294\" height=\"281\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I am a first generation college student who started my academic journey at Hostos Community College. I am a bit older and have established a fairly decent job to pay my current bills, but not enough to pay for school. \u00a0I filled out my FAFSA and sent it in but New York State did not offer me a Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) award, because of\u00a0my current pay so I have to take out federal loans. I found this to be extremely challenging considering I was struggling to make ends meet with my current expenses. I currently have my associates, which I am very proud of, but continuing my journey to achieve my bachelors has been a struggle. My current student loans exceed the 20 thousand dollar range. I would have loved for tuition cost to be much less or if New York State offered grants to help pay for even just textbooks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Taking a full load of 15 credits or about 5 classes can be extremely difficult with a full time work schedule. My biggest fear is when I finally get my degree and enter loan repayment, my salary will not match what is needed to pay back the loans. Being a part time student during some semesters means taking much longer to graduate, but the financial burden increases since it is the same cost of a full time student taking 12 credits to 18 credits.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am a first generation college student who started my academic journey at Hostos Community College. I am a bit older and have established a fairly decent job to pay my current bills, but not enough to pay for school. \u00a0I filled out my FAFSA and sent it in but New York State did not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[18,19,15],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hunter-college","tag-job","tag-student-loans","tag-tap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions\/128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirgstudents.org\/storybank\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}