Good samaritan pays for medical student’s €64k university fees
Iesha’s dream lives on despite BOI loan refusal thanks to GoFundMe windfall
A GRADUATE medical student who thought she had to give up her dream of becoming a doctor has been given a shock donation of €64,000 to cover her university fees after she launched an online campaign.
Iesha Moustafa, 25, was left devastated after Bank of Ireland refused her a Graduate Entry Medical loan because her parents did not earn enough to be the guarantors.
And as the Co. Louth student was about to say goodbye to her place on the graduate medical degree course at University College Dublin (UCD), an un-named philanthropic group donated the full amount of fees to her GoFundMe page.
Iesha told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘I can’t quite believe it. I wasn’t expecting much from it because I’ve never heard of a philanthropic organisation reaching out to a student before. I was like: “Is this a scam?” But then I checked them out when I got the email and they were totally legitimate.’
The philanthropic group presented a special scholarship to the Irish student but wished to remain anonymous because it does not usually come to the assistance of students from wealthy countries.
The donation was made after an ex-board member of the group saw Iesha GoFundMe appeal shared on LinkedIn. This person lives here, but used to reside in Saudi Arabia, where the philanthropic group is based.
Iesha said: ‘The power of the internet is just insane, I never expected anything to come from the GoFundMe page and now I can graduate.’
She had already started her course last August when she discovered she was denied the Graduate Entry Medicine (GEM) loan because she could not secure a suitable guarantor and GEM is the only loan in Ireland that allows students to delay repayment for four years after the study, helping those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds
But in May, Bank of Ireland announced that it would not offer the loans beyond next summer.
The graduate fees to study medicine here are €17,000 per year. A survey last April revealed that 92% of students across four colleges require financial assistance to participate in the graduate medicine course. Of those, almost three quarters (72%) were reliant on the Bank of Ireland loan.
In a statement, Bank of Ireland defended its decision to abolish issuing the GEM loan, saying: ‘It has accounted for a very small volume of our overall lending and the volume has dropped in recent years while our other loans became more popular, and it required a guarantor which was not an option for all students.’