Federal disability benefits are meant to help disabled people whose conditions prevent them from working. Benefits are calculated as a percentage of a worker's former salary, but rarely are they enough to pay for tuition at a 4-ear college. A number of college financing opportunities----such as loans, grants, and scholarships----are available to help people receiving disability benefits finance an education.
Instructions
Receiving Disability Benefits
1. To determine whether you are eligible for Social Security Disability payments, you must complete two tests:
1. Recent Work Test: Examines recent work history, determining the number of years a person must work within a given period before being eligible for disability benefits.
2. Duration of Work Test: Examines lifetime work history, determining the total number of years a person must pay into the Social Security System before being eligible for disability benefits.
2. Send work test information to the Social Security Administration (SSA).
3. When sending your work test documentation to the SSA, include medical information and signed affidavits from doctors, The SSA makes decisions about disability eligibility and payment amounts within six weeks of their receipt of an application.
Disability and College Financing
4. Write to a disability caseworker at the SSA and explain how a specific post-secondary education will provide you, as a disabled worker, with new skills that will enable you to rejoin the workforce. Otherwise, the SSA may take school enrollment to mean that you are ready to return to work full time.
5. Search www.disability.gov for comprehensive college financing listings for people with disabilities. Read the Grants and Scholarships sections carefully; foundations often make special provisions for people with specific disabilities, such as confinement to a wheelchair or blindness.
Similar education funding information is available at www.collegeboard.com.
6. Apply to all available scholarships. Application processes tend to begin in the fall. Applicants receive full responses by Spring.
7. Apply for financial aid through the college that you will attend. Most financial aid offices will help applicants strike a balance between grants from the educational institution and federal student loans that must be paid back over time.
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