Answered by FinAidGrrl
Almost any loan can be used for living expenses, since living expenses are built into your Cost of Attendance. See, at the start of every award year, your Financial Aid Office will set a "Cost of Attendance" for each of its students (it's sometimes also referred to as your "budget"). Your budget is a specific dollar amount which is meant to reflect the educational costs of students in your cohort (your program, your year in school, etc. -- people like you). Most budgets include items like tuition [of course], room & board, transportation, books & supplies, dependent care [where applicable], and a "reasonable allowance" for personal expenses. It can even include a computer! Obviously, your financial aid is meant to *first* be applied to billable charges like tuition, fees, and dorm charges (if you live on campus) -- but once those are covered, you can get as much financial aid as you need, UP TO your pre-set Cost of Attendance. Now, if you've reached your COA and you still need money for other expenses you will need to either (a) ask your Financial Aid Office to increase your budget [which they may not always want to do], or (b) borrow a loan that doesn't need to be certified by the school. Educational loans that don't pass through the Financial Aid Office DO exist, though I hesitate to recommend them because they generally have not-so-great terms and interest rates. You can check out the list of private lenders on finaid.org and see if any of them allow you to request that a check be mailed directly to you: www.finaid.org/loans/privatestudentloans.phtml