I’m an incoming freshman at NYU Tisch, and I come from a single parent, household. We’re about as low income as you can get with my mom barely making $20,000 a year. I’ll be the first person in my family to go to a four year college in the US, as my mother is an immigrant, which I guess is where my story really starts.
I knew I wanted to go to NYU Tisch for years, and I knew my family would never be able to afford it, so I did everything you’re supposed to do in my situation. I applied ED1, I filled out the FAFSA, I applied for external scholarships, I did it all, as stressful as it was, and then, in mid December, I got accepted. When I got accepted, I reviewed my financial aid package, and low and behold, I had been granted a hefty scholarship that essentially (with the exception of about 2000 dollars, but these were covered by grants) covered my tuition. The remaining cost of room and board were issued to me in a series of loans, including a Perkins loan, unsubsidized and subsidized federal loans, a Parent Plus Loan of about $14,000, a Pell grant, and a work study.
When I asked my guidance counselor (at my underfunded and failing) high school to review the financial aid package for me, since I obviously had no idea which loans were ‘good’ and which were ‘bad’, he said they were all great. For the price of NYU, he said, a few thousand in loans was nothing to pay back. It was a steal even. I didn’t quite believe him, as he has been known to mislead students on everything from college applications to when breaks start, so I asked another trusted teacher, who said the same, with emphasis on that everything was already provided to me.
I, still wary, then asked that he call NYU to confirm what he said was true. Together we called, and they confirmed what he had told me, I was overjoyed. NYU, one of the most expensive universities in the nation, my dream school, and I was going for nearly ‘free’? It all seemed too good to be true, and of course it was.
Now, just seven weeks before move-in day, I went to check my account balance with the school. My mom and I had been depending on the promise of the Pell Grant reimbursement to sustain me until my workstudy could begin. I wanted to make sure that it, as well as the rest of my loans were still there. What I found was that my remaining balance, due the fourth of August, is about 7,000 dollars, a semester’s worth of what was granted to my by the Parent Plus Loan guaranteed to me by my guidance counselor.
The more I looked into it, the more I found that my mom had to apply for the loan–we didn’t just ‘have it’ as I had been told repeatedly, so we applied, and just as expected, my mother was denied.
Now, I am left with a balance of approximately 14,000 for the year (the cost of on campus housing), with no way to pay it back. It was my belief that I had been given the Parent PLUS loan from the school, and as an 18 year old who’s never even been grocery shopping by herself, I had no reason to believe otherwise. My mother, an immigrant, who herself has no experience with this, believed what I believed, and now we have no way to cover the remainder of my tuition.
We have no money in savings, and if we did, it wouldn’t be nearly enough to cover the 14,000. I’m aware that I can probably get a Stafford loan in the amount of $4,000 because my mother was denied, but that still leaves 10,000 that I don’t have. We are going to talk to the financial aid office on Monday (I was told by several trusted adults that there is often money left over at schools that they did not give for scholarships, and that I can request this money for my own use, though this seems implausible to me).
Does anyone know of anyway that I can somehow borrow or gain the remaining 10,000 without an endorser for the Parent PLUS loan? I am desperate for help, especially this late in the year–
Thanks,
Jove
