OP- hugs. Always frustrating to have curveballs thrown at you.
Couple of suggestions- we didn’t have this issue on financial aid, but I’ve been executor for an estate and it was mindboggling how many documents I needed notarized. And sometimes it was a phone call from the lawyer-- “this needs to go out in 48 hours”- gee, thanks for the heads up.
Here are some notary options you may not have thought of:
1- Local real estate office of a big national chain. Often the office manager or several of the realtors are notaries. I think I paid $3. They don’t do it to make money, they do it as a convenience to their own agents because so many of the documents need to be notarized.
2- Bank or credit union where you have your checking account. Mine offers no fee. If you are near a TD bank branch, worth a phone call. They have Sunday hours (check that the notary is there on Sunday). I was so impressed with how nice they were (no charge) I opened another account with them.
3- ANY law firm near your office is likely to have a notary if there are more than 5-6 lawyers. It saves them time because they are always notarizing documents. One firm told me that every legal assistant was a notary. I’m sure post covid you can’t just walk in, but call reception and see if they’re willing to meet you in the lobby to notarize the form.
4- if there is a supermarket near you that has a bank branch located in front near customer service… I’ve learned that either customer service OR one of the bank tellers is usually a notary (at least in my state). I ended up using them a lot, because they have REALLY long hours (the store might be open 24/7 which the bank is not- but the banks were generally open past 8 pm which was super convenient).
Thanks for the suggestions! The issue is my working hours and trying to coordinate me picking my son up to get him to a notary. If I didn’t work or worked PT, this would be easy peasy but I work from 7:30-5:30 every day including Saturday. That leaves Sunday and I haven’t found anyone who can notarize anything on Sunday.
Luckily, I have off on election day so we are able to do this form but I’m nervous about what the other schools will expect. My son applied EA to all ten schools and the deadlines were either 11/1 or 11/15. I hope they don’t expect me to scramble around to get this done by 11/15. There is no indication on any portal that I need to do this at any school so I hope I don’t start getting emails in the next week.
And maybe you won’t. He needs to regularly check his spam folder too. Often these financial aid requests end up there because they are sent from an unfamiliar email address.
OP- are you an MD or is that just your initials? If you work in an office- are there other tenants in the building? If any of them are lawyers or real estate offices- I’ll bet there’s a notary. If you work in a hospital, you may have a notary in your building (General Counsel or CFO’s office). If you need anything else notarized, agree with MMRose that figuring out how he can get to a notary on his own is going to save you a bunch of grief!
When we needed an “after hours” notary, we reached out to our friends. Turned out one of our neighbors was a notary, and another former colleague (a teacher friend) was as well. Both were happy to come to our house to notarize documents.
Are you on social media? Post asking for a notary who can help you outside of 9-5. Or ask a friend to post 9n your behalf. There are so many notaries everywhere and in my experience, they are always willing to help for free. (I’ve given them a bottle of wine for their trouble though.) Your local town offices will have a free notary too. Really, it’s pretty easy to find a notary barring some very rural place.
@MDMom1975 Perhaps there is a notary at your son’s school? Someone in the administration or a teacher? In some situations HS transcripts have to be notarized so there might be one in the office?
Can he explain the situation to his counselor and ask for help getting his signature notarized at school during the school day?
I thought about this today. If he had to get another form notarized, I’ll ask his counselor. There is no public transport close to his school and I don’t have money for a taxi or Uber. I actually drive for UberEats sometimes to make extra money.
No. It’s just me. My son works on the weekends and has sports every day after school. We are planners so something like this that comes up last minute unexpectedly ends up being a huge PITA.
It always does but man, I’m exhausted. On a different note, does anyone know how to stop all of the college mail? It was interesting at first to read some of the brochures, etc that came to the house but enough is enough!
Call a bank - see if you can make an appointment - even for Saturday. It’s really not difficult.
As for stopping mail, on email - unsubscribe. We had the same issue - we were on hundreds. Some of them say “all communication”.
For others, for paper, send a note to admission letting them know you’ve selected schools and to stop. Or just fill up the recycling bin til the season ends.
But usually the online subscriptions will fix it all.
Nope. Not unless you waste a lot of time going to the website of every college ACT or College Board has sold your son’s data to. It will stop pretty soon as application season winds down.