Financial Aid help

<p>My parents and I made a terrible mistake in misreading our financial aid reward letter and not accepting our financial aid. I've only been given 3.5k but any money helps. I've tried calling the UB Financial aid office, but they've been unresponsive due to the overwhelming number of phone calls they've been receiving. I've contacted them through email so I'm waiting on that.</p>

<p>However I would really like to know if it is still possible to retrieve my financial aid reward.</p>

<p>Also, are there academic scholarships available for semesters? I did not receive any academic scholarships due to a pretty poor performance toward to end of my high school year, but I am wondering if there is a way to avoid having to pay 20k for this school year.</p>

<p>If they were going to offer you a scholarship you would have been notified of it around the time of your acceptance. It would not have been based on your final senior year but on the test scores and gpa when you applied. If you want to accept your financial aid you should call BIRD to do so…it’s a completely automated system and there were instructions in the pamphlet that came with your award letter. I’m pretty sure they’re also on the SRC’s website. If the aid involves Stafford loans you’ll also have to do the pre-borrowing counseling and sign the MPN - there are links on UB’s website to do this.</p>

<p>I don’t have the financial aid pamphlet in front of me, but I believe there was no set deadline for accepting your financial aid – you were supposed to reply by using the BIRD system to accept the package within two weeks of receipt or something like that. Read the pamphlet to understand the steps, then call BIRD today and see if it will still let you do this.</p>