<p>I have posted before complaining about Ohio State's Financial Aid department and here I go again.</p>
<p>My daughter is a sophomore at OSU...last year she had some scholarships...this year she only has one (it is through my husband's employer) it is for $3300.00 which they tax and it ended up being $1556 per semester. She accepted the $6500.00 in Stafford loans and the rest of the bill we paid. It was due by August 15th. We paid the outstanding balance by the due date. The money from my husband's employer had not shown up by this date so we paid what was due at that time. On August 27th, the $1556.00 was applied to her account since it was an overpayment she was issued a refund of $1556.00 on August 28th. Ohio State does not send out bills, everything is checked online. On September 4th my daughter receives an email saying that she had an outstanding balance of $771.00...she was not sure how. She went to the financial aid office and they said since she got the external scholarship that changed her need but that she could change her loan status and have the $771.00 increased with the unsubsidized loan (it was taken off the subsidized loan amount) which she said she wanted to do. They said fine. On September 5, she gets an email saying that as of midnight if payment is not received she will be removed from her classes. The financial aid department had told her on the 4th that everything was straightened out...she went to classes on the 6th and she is already removed from the attendence roster. She had to explain her situation...her one professor told her "Good Luck". Another trip to the financial aid office (I told her not to leave until it was resolved) the man helping her told her with the push of a button he could have her enrolled which he did while she was sitting there. She gets back to her dorm and had an email from the housing department telling her that she has until the 12th to be re-enrolled or they would be changing the locks on her dorm room. I live 2 and a half hours from the college or I would go myself to talk to them to get this figured out. I try calling and it tells me the phone line is full and to email...I have sent 6 emails in two days and have gotten 0 response. Sorry if this is hard to understand and I guess I don't really have a question, more of a vent/rant. Is this financial aid fiasco exclusive to Ohio State or would she have this at any universtiy?</p>
<p>I hope it all gets resolved. Frankly, I wouldn’t let a 2 1/2 hour drive keep me from going there unless it meant losing my job. </p>
<p>As for the weird loan change. Is your EFC high? If so, then the small merit scholarship probably filled too much need so she no longer qualified for the full amount of a subsidized loan. </p>
<p>In the meantime, I would use some of that 1500 refund to at least prevent her from getting kicked out until this is resolved. Or at least put it on a credit card in the meantime.</p>
<p>Good luck!! and hugs to your D who must be freaking out. (and I would give the school heck about unnecessarily stressing a student out over all of this. tOSU certainly can’t claim to be any kind of tOSU Family if this is how they behave.</p>
<p>A million years ago, I attended the University of Cincinnati. I had lived in the residence halls the previous year, but had found an apartment for the next year. I did not complete a housing contract. Tuition, less scholarships, was paid, thought I was fine.</p>
<p>Get a notice (and all this was in the days of USMail…and gee, it DID come to my apartment, but slowly) that, because I hadn’t paid for my room and board (keep in mind I had no housing assigned, nor a meal plan!) my classes had been cancelled. So…I spent 2 days trudging from one far-flung office to another (and back a couple times to Office A) with my various documents and proofs…until I ended up standing in line for late registration, praying I would be able to get back in my classes. And then catching up the missed work…and juggling being in a couple different sections than before…</p>
<p>Hubs had a story where he got a notice that there was a hold on his record, no grades released, etc. Apparently, in the era when people paid with checks (told you we were old!), a woman (my husband is a man…) had transposed the digits of her social security number on her check to the bookstore (yeah…we used to put that personally identifiable data on there, right with the checking information…) and her check had bounced. Guess whose number those transposed digits matched? So, even though they had the check with a woman’s name (not me) and my husband was able to show them that he was…not her…it took MONTHS before they got the hold off his account. </p>
<p>I am so sorry for your frustration and the system that you are caught up in. It is hard as a distant parent as well. My d’s school just updated their computer systems, and the one that grants parental access (to anything but paying the bills…somehow, that was working…) is not yet up. So when they messed up one of her scholarships, I was getting lots of notices of the amount they wanted paid (that was covered by her award)…but all I could do was forward stuff to her and ask her to put the fire out, as I’m not allowed to contact the school in relation to her (grades, schedule, finances…anything) until they get their FERPA stuff figured out…</p>
<p>May your daughter’s situation resolve easily, quickly, and well.</p>
That reminds me of the time my bank deducted $50 from my savings account for no apparent reason. When I called to ask why, they said another customer with the same name as mine had overdrawn her checking account and they took it from mine to cover her overdraft. I closed those accounts and found a different bank.</p>
<p>That said, my (state) university was a giant bureaucracy of ineptness that seemed to pride itself on being so.</p>
<p>About 15 years ago, in the old paper record days, my employer accepted a resignation from another employee with the exact same (common) name as mine.
I learned of this employee’s resignation when I received an invitation to apply for COBRA insurance coverage!! Rather startling.</p>
<p>What happened is relatively normal … your EFC is high enough that your D was no longer eligible for some of her sub loan. Most colleges will not replace sub with unsub due to the difference in terms. Larger schools are often not set up to ask the student if she wants unsub … she is responsible for requesting the unsub herself (this is due to staffing issues and timing of reports). The housing office is most likely working from reports generated once a week (or once in a blue moon, depending on the IT staff). There is often a lag, and students will have resolved the issue in the meantime. In that case, the student needs to contact the housing office to make sure that her account shows as updated on their end (once the unsub increase has paid to her account … which she can see in her portal). This is an excellent opportunity for your D to learn how to navigate the process at her school.</p>
<p>Thanks for your replies…The same thing happened last year…We told them about the ONE external scholarship that we expected her to get this year but we did not have an exact amount…it could be up to $3300.00 but did not know exactly what the amount would be…We do have a high EFC and I have accepted responsibility for having to pay a huge amount out of pocket and have paid when it was due…I am upset because of her being kicked out of class happened in a 24 hour period and she had went to the financial aid office TWICE trying to get it resolved…it is not like we ignored the situation and thought it would go away. I have tried calling myself and sent emails that have gone unanswered. I am not trying to say she is not responsible for getting the issue fixed but I think Ohio State has some responsibilty in helping her get it fixed. But that is just my opinion. Thanks again…like I said this was more of a vent/rant post and I didn’t really expect anyone to have an answer for me but thanks for those that took the time to reply.</p>
<p>And I agree this whole process has been a learning experience for me and my daughter. I am guessing next year the best thing to do is to not accept the subsidized loan, just accept the unsubsidized loan. Hopefully that will keep this from happening again. For our long term goal, I had figured on her getting the maximum Stafford loans every year but I am going to have to refigure my long term budget and just not count on that. I am sorry, I am just really frustrated with the whole system.</p>
<p>Since the burser’s office, financial aid and housing are all separate departments yet inter-related, perhaps in the future when e-mails get send copy all three departments. There are several e-mails recently regarding chain reaction issues. It’s nasty, but hopefully your D can get around to all three offices and make sure all is straightened out. Good luck.</p>
<p>During the enrollment and fin aid time I check the schools website at least three times a day, morning noon and end of business. Every problem we had was one department not talking to the other and then its automatic emails sent out without people looking at the other departments and potentially dumping classes.</p>
<p>What a nightmare…I would note all this and send to president and deans.</p>
<p>Freshman year my daughters school forgot to certify a loan. It went back, then the school threatened to unenroll my daughter because of the balance due. It was totally their fault on all counts, but it took me going to a top supervisor to get the, to give us two weeks to come up with the money. They basically said oops but we aren’t going to give you much time to get this resolved. And it was like, okay we are going to trust you to fix this even though we were the ones who messed up. </p>
<p>It was infuriating but I had to be all nice and grateful and calm.</p>
<p>Of course it was the schools fault. You get a loan. The school says yes, the student is enrolled, yes they qualify and yes they need the money. That is the schools job. And it has to be done in a timely fashion. If the school doesn’t notify the loan provider the student indeed needs the loan, the financials show the loan works with the other aid, and thus the loan offer is withdrawn by the lender, it is definaely the schools fault. They dropped the ball and didn’t do theirn job. They missed somehow sending a confirmation to the lender. Oops. How is that not the schools fault?</p>
<p>My daughters school sent her an email this year saying they were going to pull her classes if she didn’t pay up. Meantime, the fin aid department showed all her grants, loans, etc “pending” just waiting to be input into her account. Paperwork back log. Would that be her fault as well? That one department is behind, and anther department doesn’t double check before they end out scary emails? We did our job. They were slow. Not our fault.</p>
<p>In the case where they didn’t certify loan on time and thus loan was withdrawn, again not our fault. Totally the schools error.</p>
<p>I apologize. I misread what I quoted. I thought it said my daughter forgot to certify the loan which would mean there was no valid contract. You’re right, the school did not follow through.</p>
<p>Really, punctuation is your friend. “My daughter’s school” is not so readily misconstrued as “my daughters school” - don’t know exactly why, but the latter is easy to misread.</p>