OSR Liaison Update - GSA Committee on Student Financial Assistance (COSFA)

November 2009

What can you do to address medical student debt? First, educate yourself as an OSR representative on the subject by taking a look at these five key updates from COSFA, then help educate other students at your medical school:

FIRST - Financial Information, Resources, Services, and Tools - COSFA continues work with the FIRST team to update financial information geared towards medical students and applicants. Visit FIRST, check out FIRST Facts, become a fan of FIRST on Facebook, and link to the FIRST podcast. M.D. Economics presents "Dr. Median" and common repayment strategies encountered during residency.

Upcoming FIRST Tools - As requested by OSR, loan calculators that crunch numbers regarding repayment from data in the loan worksheet are now included under FIRST tools. Development continues on a student loan worksheet application that will store user-generated information about student loans and be used beginning the first day of medical school.

Medical Student Debt Facts - The Debt Fact Card contains updated stats on medical student debt, revealing that on average medical students graduate from medical school with $160,000 of debt.

New FIRST Fact Sheets - COSFA continues the campaign to increase financial information available to students, with several FIRST Fact sheets in the development pipeline. Recent additions include Loan Forgiveness for Public Service, Income Based Repayment, Cost of Applying to Residency, and Choosing a Specialty.

Loan Repayment/Forgiveness Programs - Medical students have numerous options to alleviate loan debt with 100+ programs at the federal and state level. Check out the online listings, and federal programs at the NIH, NHSC, HRSA, and Military for more information.

Should you have questions or ideas about financial assistance issues and the OSR, please feel free to contact me.

Mark Bicket, MSIII
GSA-COSFA Liaison
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
bicket@jhmi.edu

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