Finances are almost always a struggle for college students. School can get expensive but luckily graduate students can apply for professional advancement grants or while they are here at Iowa State.

Grants are provided to graduate students through the Graduate and Professional Student Senate at Iowa State. These grants can be used for expenses when traveling to conferences, workshops or other professional development opportunities.

But any one student is only allowed to receive one travel professional advancement grant per fiscal year. Also, GPSS can choose to audit any grant application so students must save all the documents and records of travel.

GPSS is now accepting grant applications for any professional development events from Aug. 25 through Jan. 11, 2015. Applications for second semester grants are not yet being accepted.

In the past, professional advancement grant applications have all been on paper. But this summer, GPSS has changed to an entirely online application in hopes that the change will result in quicker applications and fewer mistakes.

One particularly beneficial aspect of an online application is that students can now view the status of their applications online at any time.

In addition to going completely online, there have been some minor changes to the application itself. Graduate students who have filled out the grant application before will notice now that there is no need to submit paper copies of the abstract acceptance and registration confirmation.

For more information on the grants or the grant application, go online to the GPSS website.