Pell grant revoked, I need help with my situation

<p>My school revoked my pell grant for Fall 2009 all the way till August 2010 and I owe $8000. they claim I was attending two different schools and getting finnacial aid at both which is not true. They are not doing anything to resolve this. I don't have 8,000 and my life has been ruined. All of my credits that I earned for 3 years in my pre nursing pre requisites have gone down the drain. I can't even go to RN school. I have been depressed, drinking and considering suicide. What can I do to get this situation resolved??</p>

<p>Why do they think you were attending another school? If you were not, it should be fairly easy to prove. You need to go in and sit down with someone high up in the FA office and ask them why they are saying this and what evidence they have.</p>

<p>They dont even allow students in the Financial Aid office. Matters are done over the phone. they keep bouncing me around and saying they will leave a message for so and so, only for me to never get a phone call back. I have been calling them since April and nothing has been done about this. I don’t owe 8,000 and I don’t have the money either. I am stuck. I can’t get into nursing school. It took me three years to finish those pre requisites. I can’t believe a school can get away with ruining a person’s life like this</p>

<p>I went to another school for one semester and then attended their school the next. Apparently they are saying that I was registered at both schools and getting financial aid at the same time even though I was not</p>

<p>If you can’t get a response from the FA department, contact a higher person in the school and tell them you are trying to sort it out but can’t get a response. Or contact a federal aid ombudsman to help resolve the issue.
[url=&lt;a href=“http://www.ombudsman.ed.gov/about/about.html]Ombudsman[/url”&gt;http://www.ombudsman.ed.gov/about/about.html]Ombudsman[/url</a>]</p>

<p>Thank you. I hope this helps me out because my life has been ruined my this college</p>

<p>Spoiledcandy, from this and your previous thread about this situation, it sounds like you have been doing all of this over the phone. If that is the case, you NEED to put your issues IN WRITING and mail them certified mail/return receipt requested to the director of financial aid at the college in question. Put all of the information relative to this IN WRITING. You need to put the dates you were no longer enrolled at their school, and when YOU stopped receiving financial aid from them as a result. Put it ALL in writing. Put all of your contact information IN WRITING as well. </p>

<p>What I find odd is that you no issues with your current school re: financial aid. Did you not apply for Stafford loans there? Just curious…because you state this all happened prior to 2010…over a year ago. What has your status at your current school been since that time? Have you taken out any federal student loans?</p>

<p>I have sent the school a letter and it hasn’t helped with anything at all. Yes, I applied for Stafford loans and had no issue with financial aid with the other school. I don’t know what the heck is going on and why they revoked it, it just sounds like something personal to me.</p>

<p>get together all your copies of letters and communications and contact the ombudsman office.</p>

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<p>Unless you withdrew from school A (hopefully in writing) to let then know that you would attending school B in the spring, when you began attending school at school B, you were on the record for having attending 2 schools at the same time.</p>

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<p>How could I have been attending both schools if I was not registered for any classes at both colleges??</p>

<p>You need to start gathering information (can you gather any of this on-line from the school): </p>

<p>your transcripts (student copies, because you will not get official copies without paying them) because you do not want to have any courses with unofficial withdrawls attached to them.</p>

<p>copies of your bursars recepit for the time in question, so that you can see what you were billed for
information from the registrars office for this period in time so that you can see what courses the schools state that you were registered for</p>

<p>It seems like you already know why you are in this situation so as you previously stated</p>

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<p>You need to slow down and follow the advice here.</p>

<p>1) Send the REGISTERED letter. Not just any old letter.
2) Create a detailed paper-trail of loans, dates, transcripts, etc.
3) Go see someone in person at the college.
4) Get clear yourself if you exceeded loan or grant limits, because it sounds like you already believe that to be the case.</p>

<p>If you do owe the money:</p>

<p>Yes, Fed Aid can retroactively call back monies. The grants are freebie monies and you must correctly qualify for them. If the IRS sent you a too-big tax refund, you bet you’d owe the extra back. Same for Fed Aid grants. You can’t keep taxpayer funded grants if you did not qualify for them.</p>

<p>No, you do not need to “start over” with your college classes. You just need to work for one or two years and pay off the 8K you already owe. You are better off paying the money owed for the classes you have finished because it is unlikely you’d get funding for the new set of classes AND your transfer colleges will require transcripts from ALL previously attended colleges anyhow.</p>

<p>At 300-700 a month you can get this bill paid off in a year or two. My sister once worked weekends cleaning houses as a parttime job on top of her fulltime work during the week and made nearly 700/mo just with the parttime job. It was not glamorous, but it got her out of debt.</p>

<p>The hold on your transcript is not outrageous. It is the only leverage the college has to get you to pay them back. Otherwise lots of people would skip out on their tuition and other bills.</p>

<p>I agree it is very frustrating and difficult to have to pay back an unexpected 8K from a revoked grant, but people manage to pay off debts of this level all of the time. Your plans are merely delayed for now.</p>

<p>Btw - you seem to have a problem writing very clearly what is going on. Above you say that the FA office won’t meet people in person but in another thread from MARCH 2011 you state that “students are not allowed to in the financial aid office unless by appointment–which I can barely book since they dont always pick up the phone.” </p>

<p>So which is true? You seem to write things to try and garner sympathy (the FA won’t meet me in person) but in reality, it is just a matter of being persistent and making extra calls to FA.</p>

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<p>I am VERY confused about your sequence of events. Is your CURRENT school the one that is holding your transcript or are you on a THIRD college…the "school you went to for one semester…plus “their school”, plus wherever you’ve been since where you had no trouble with financial aid?</p>

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<p>The FA office will not meet with poeple in person. Initially, they told me I needed to book an appointment then they retracted that statement by saying that they will only handle matters over the phone. A few months ago I actually went to their main building, only for the guard to inform me that students are not allowed in the FA office unless by appointment. I have been calling the FA office and emailing with them for many months, only for them to bounce me between Student Accounts, FA office, and giving me phone numbers to administrators that won’t ever pick up their phone. </p>

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<p>No. My current school is not holding any transcripts. It’s the previous school that is holding my transcripts.</p>

<p>And did you go to a school BEFORE the school that is holding your transcripts?</p>

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<p>How much in loans have you taken out? Do you have all of the disbursement slips…you should have received notification EACH TIME money was disbursed to your school. Do you have the bursars bills from this school that is holding your records?</p>

<p>Did you EVER drop courses in a term and become part time? Did you ever not pass a course or drop a course during the term? Did you meet Satisifactory Academic Progress? Did you ever get excess money (more than you owed the college) disbursed to YOU at the end of a term?</p>

<p>Contact the other school and have them send a transcript to your current school. On your transcript it should indicate when you took classes there.</p>

<p>Mom2…the school won’t release the transcript because they say the student owes them money…I believe that is part of the issue here. It’s not the CURRENT school…it’s the past one.</p>

<p>OP…how did you transfer to your current school? Did you have to provide a transcript when you transferred? Did you have any difficulty getting it? How long ago did you transfer and when did you stop taking courses at the previous school.</p>

<p>You need a detailed chain of events with dates when you started the semester when you finished the semester, grant disbursements, number of credits attempted, number of credits completed, grades (for satisfactory academic progress)… as Anika states in her second point. When you’ve got that all straight send it to the most senior person you’ve tried to contact - send it FedX or certified mail or something that requires proof. Tell them you’d like clarification in two weeks. If you don’t get something back…call again. If you owe the money then you need to clear the debt before your transcripts are released. You won’t “loose” the classes or the credit you will have lost the ability to get a transcript until the bill is paid.</p>

<p>Spoiledcandy, please go to [National</a> Student Loan Data System for Students](<a href=“http://www.nslds.ed.gov%5DNational”>http://www.nslds.ed.gov). You can access your grant and loan information. Please tell me how much you received and on what dates for all grants and loans from April 1, 2009-September 30, 2010. Also, please post the dates you attended the two schools at any time during that period of time (call them School A and School B). When you post the grant/loan information, please indicate at which school you received the money (in other words, for each grant and loan, tell me when, where, and how much).</p>

<p>Until very recently, I was in charge of Pell at a large university. I know all the rules and regulations (and yes, I have had to take money away, so I know all about that). I will look at your info & try to explain.</p>