Scholarship -- HELP

Around the 12th of April, I was invited to respond to an email regarding a $10,000 college scholarship (from my school). It said that I should respond to the scholarship by the 17th (and I did). The following day, $10,000 appeared in my portal. I thought that I had gotten it!

That weekend, I talked to some people who had been invited to the same scholarship. There were people who said that they had gotten the scholarship without even responding to the email. I thought it was weird, but I just assumed that they were great students. Then, one of my friends spoke to the person in charge and said it was put there to “show how it would look” if I had indeed gotten the scholarship.

I was disappointed, mostly because I thought I had secured the scholarship. The person my friend spoke to said that they sent out the email to around 100 students, “expecting 30 to 40 to respond”. The rest of the money my friend said would be hopefully given to them by the school.

In the email, they said they would give out decisions on who would be getting the scholarships by April 25th, because they knew we had to SIR. I was nervous because I was deciding between other schools based on this offer.

The 25th comes and I have not heard back from them. One of my friends called and she was told that it would becoming within the next few days, definitely before May 1st. She emailed them a few times, given multiple deadlines that they did not go by.

By May 1st, I had decided I was going to this school regardless of this decision, and I had still not heard back from them. She called and was told that they would be sending out confirmations of this scholarship by that Friday. Nothing heard from them that Friday.

At this point, I don’t know what to do. Me and a lot of my friends are waiting for this confirmation as it affects all of our decisions in terms of money, etc. I personally have not called at this point just from the experiences of my friends and I know it will probably be a waste of time. What should I do???

Assume your will not be getting more money, so why bother to wait for it? Didn’t you already SIR? The UC’s don’t have money. Why should it affect your decision?

I’m not waiting for it, I just want to know if I got it or not.

You need to ask the school. We know even less than you do about this.

There seems to be some mix-up. This is UCLA, correct? That’s not a school that would simply play games.

What aid pkg did you get and accept? What was in it?

Yes. I chose the FinAid Quarterly, I don’t know if there was an option to accept aid, because I didn’t see it. When I called the financial aid office, they said it was there, but I assume they were just talking about it showing up on my portal, not confirming it.

OP – I mean this kindly: never, ever, assume anything in this process! You need to check with fin aid again about accepting your aid.

You need to pick up the phone and call the school. Stop relaying on what your friends found out. This is your FA and you need to find out what happen to YOUR FA.

I did @noname87: the financial aid office said it was there, but I’m still not exactly sure why the people would postpone the ‘confirmation’.

UCLA is supposed to release a FAN (financial aid notification) around July and it should show on that.