<p>It's going to be the final semester of my senior year of undergrad, and I only need one more class to graduate so I switched to part-time status. I read through a bunch of fine print, and at my school, you need to be full-time to keep your academic scholarship, which I think is kind of dumb for students in my situation, especially because I have not received much aid (with a ~4.0 engineering cumulative GPA) compared to my underperforming peers in school.</p>
<p>Anyways, I recently received a tuition bill for $0. After adding up my part-time credits, the bill still subtracted out my scholarship, taking my balance below zero and therefore the bill is asking me to pay $0.</p>
<p>So should I just "pay off" my bill and leave it alone? Or should I try to figure out how much I would owe if I didn't have this scholarship? Anyone ever have experience with this? I'm thinking the worst that can happen if I leave it alone is I play dumb about reading the fine print and just have to pay for that one class later on in the semester.</p>
<p>A lot of the time, full time requirements for scholarships are waived when a student does not need to be full time in the lase semester. That might be the case here. If not, then they may bill you later. As long as you have the money set aside to pay the bill if they do charge you, I wouldn’t worry about it at this point.</p>
<p>lol…how do you “pay off” a 0 bill??? Send them a check for $0? lol</p>
<p>Leave it alone. If you later get billed, then contact the school and explain that it’s your last semester and you only needed that one class. That may be fine.</p>
<p>Get it settled now now that you can move forward, and get everything in writing. Make sure that your tuition is covered even if you are attending part time. You don’t want any last minute surprises.</p>
<p>The school will not release your diploma or transcripts if you owe them money. You don’t have to fight through some bureaucratic red tape with your school at a time when you need your documents and “need them now”.</p>
<p>Sybbie…as long as he has the money set aside to pay if need be, why should he alert the school? </p>
<p>alerting the school may just open a hornet’s nest and then he’ll have to pay. He really shouldn’t have to pay, but some nit-picky person might hold-firm and make him pay. </p>
<p>He should just regularly check his “balanced owed” and if at some point he is billed, then he should FIRST see if they’ll waive that because he’s in his last semester…and then if not, then pay.</p>
<p>Why should he walk around with a cinder block hanging by a thread over his head. Not only is it the most ethical thing to do; Op has a concern that something may not be right and addresses it head on. If he is going to owe the school money, he can pay it now or pay it later. Better to do it now and say that I saw a discrepancy and came to straighten it out instead of “waiting” and and looking over his shoulder wondering if the situation will ever catch up to him.</p>
<p>My D’s school requires a separate process to confirm a zero balance bill. If you get a zero balance bill and don’t take that final step, you get de-registered for classes.</p>
<p>If it were my student I’d have them check into it with the school and get the facts now. Depending on how big the scholarship is, whether there will still be r&b costs anyway etc., I might encourage them to take 12 credits for fun/enrichment if there wasn’t a financial reason not to do that. There may be fixed fees regardless of part-time/full-time status. But we’d need the facts up front to know.</p>
<p>Does your scholarship cover everything? You you have grants/loans as part of your package/</p>
<p>Keep in mind that with one more class, if you are only taking one class, you will be attending less than half time and your financial aid will be prorated accordingly (I believe that you will have to be be at least a half time student to get loans).</p>
<p>Why should he walk around with a cinder block hanging by a thread over his head.</p>
<p>Well, it would only be a cinderblock if he didn’t have the money to pay. </p>
<p>I don’t think it’s unethical. It’s his last semester. He’s not really trying to get away with anything. The scholarship should pay for 8 semesters. This is the 8th one. The school would be crazy to insist that he take extra classes, especially if other students are trying to get into those classes.</p>
<p>That said, I agree with annoyingdad that he might want to take some extra classes for fun.</p>