Might be getting fired - what now?

[concerned guy]

Don't want to go into details, but I mucked something up REALLY bad recently, and I'm worried I'll be fired. I'm a little over 2 years done in a 3 year commitment. Does that mean I have to pay back 1/3 the "total award"? Or is it just tuition? Or do I have to pay anything back, since it would be them firing me, not me quitting?

[Vandal]

I can't speak on anything regarding the requirement to pay back your remaining funds due to being fired vs quitting, I would suggest reaching out to your SMART coordinator to get more info on that. However I can speak to how the requirements were laid out to me regarding repayment as I made sure to ask about this once my Phase 2 started just in case I decided I wanted to move somewhere else. Repayment, again info from what I've been told-not experienced so take with a grain of salt, should be prorated based on how much time you served, minus taxes you paid on stipends, minus health insurance and any extra funds obtained due to participating in a summer internship (both are not required to be paid back).

In the end it should be a prorated amount of the sum of "miscellaneous allowance", stipends, and tuition minus taxes spent based on the rest of your debted time. Hope this info helps and once you get things all figured out I would greatly enjoy hearing how SMART handles your situation.

Cheers,

[smart48]

Vandat, that’s great info. How about interest, what’s the interest rate?

[ZiggySasha234]

Don't want to go into details, but I mucked something up REALLY bad recently, and I'm worried I'll be fired. I'm a little over 2 years done in a 3 year commitment. Does that mean I have to pay back 1/3 the "total award"? Or is it just tuition? Or do I have to pay anything back, since it would be them firing me, not me quitting?

did you end up getting fired? Let us know what happened.

[Vandal]

Vandat, that’s great info. How about interest, what’s the interest rate?

I don't have interest rate info, if you reach out to your coordinator they can tell you "the grand total of funding that you received while in Phase 1". I reached out to my coordinator previously a good half dozen months into my Phase 2 just so I knew what the repayment amount would be for my own tracking however they only gave the sum balance from Phase 1, no interest rate or prorated amount given. I think SMART purposefully doesn't provide interest rates/estimated totals until you fully request to be removed from the program so that they can either A) have a floating interest rate that changes as the economy changes, and/or B) they just don't want to do the athematic unless/until they actually HAVE to. (EDIT: Note I don't have any actual basis for my A or B comments, just my working guesses based on conversations with SMART)

If you do end up getting removed from the program please update us all with your lessons learned so we can keep it in mind for our own use.

Cheers,