<p>My daughter applied for this year and she wasn’t given any grant though she had a perfect GPA and 2250 SAT while her friends who had lower academic credentials and who family income wasn’t much lower than mine got upto 40K in grants. I enquired and found that it was because of a delay in sending her citizenship document. She was asked to send it on March 2. She sent it the same day as an attachment to an email after confirming if she can send it so. She got an acknowledgement email to it as well. Later on March 25 when she had called the office asking why her financial information was not getting posted, she was told that they were waiting for her citizenship document. She told them that she had sent it to them on March 2nd itself, and that she had the confirmation email too. The office didn’t seem to have it. They wanted her to send it again. But two days after they informed that they had exhausted all the grants and cannot give her any money. She was asked to pay the full 59K fee!!!<br>
BU was her dream school and she worked for it since her tenth grade. All her close friends are into that school with good amount of assistance. She stand above a few of them in scores and not much different in family income too. Just because someone in the office misplaced her citizenship form, she is penalized without any grant (who can pay 59K fee, unless he is a millionaire?).
The finance office coolly says that she should have been more diligent !!! I don’t understand how she could have foreseen that someone in the office either deliberately or unknowingly misplaced her citizenship document. She has a proof of the email acknowledgment to the email carrying the attachment. I am terribly upset to see my daughter’s dreams crashed because of someone’s mistake in the office. The office told me to ‘appeal’ but from what I see of the situation now, I don’t think it is going to be of any use.
But I am really angry. Can I sue them legally?</p>
<p>I don’t think you’d have much chance suing them, as there is no way to prove she would have gotten a grant. I would appeal though since you have nothing to lose. Try to be calm about it and hope you can start over with someone else in the office and that that other person will be reasonable. They probably have used all the money they had set aside, but they have no idea how much of it will actually be spent on students that accept their offer, so there is probably a way to get a little more if they are motivated to do so. I wouldn’t get into how other students got grants with inferior credentials etc. though. Just emphasize how much your daughter wants to go to BU and that she did exactly what she thought she needed to. And that she will definitely go with a grant of $X.</p>
<p>I definitely would include a screenshot of the email and everything too with a clear date in your appeal as that seems to be the major factor. Good luck!</p>
<p>We too have been very disappointed with BU’s FA and Merit process/effort. My DD1 is a tremendous student much like Uriah’s. We received very little in Grant $ and no Merit $. We applied early and met every deadline. We appealed our aid offer and my daughter received a very poorly worded, terse email that our appeal was denied. We are crossing BU off the list. I will not allow any of my other children to even consider applying to BU. I would not recommend applying to BU unless you are ready to "pony up"the full retail price. Frankly there are much better values and out there.</p>