Somehow, through human error, I was dropped by UOP - I was told that I was deleted. This was January. It took until March and 1392 to be un-deleted. The financial aids office insistance that I owed money was never explained. I sent a spreadsheet with charges and payments that listed credit balance of more that 2300. When I sent the spreadsheet, I asked them to point out what I was missing. Why the student site of my account did not match the financial aid site. I received no response.
On Decemeber 22, I received an email from my new financial aid counselor that I would need to pay about 6,000 to continue. I am or was about to start the 3rd year of the doctoral program. The first two years were a repeat of my master's degrees. Her advice was to get another loan for 12,000 because the loans would be dispearsed in 2 chunks. The counselor stated that in the 3rd year I would receive 9,000 dollars back, but could not put that in writing.
The explanation given for the amount owed went back to my withdrawel from 1 to 3 and how it affected FAFSA. The fact that it was a error on the University end-they did not deny this, had no bearing. FAFSA customer support was very unhelpful, they said that was between the school and I. The rest of the questions asked were answered with "I don't know"; including who do I talk to now-what department?"I don't know."
In the course of trying to get a copy of my account from the financial aid office-run by Appollo-I finally was told that due to the Sarbanes Oxely Act that I could not have a copy and that was for my protection. Which sounds illogical. It is my information, I already know my address, SSN etc so what am I being protected from?
Then the icing on the cake-I already had my 3 chapters for my dissertation completed-I seem to have been black-listed from talking to anyone at UOP. No return phone calls, e-mails or communication from them since I guess I asked too many questions.
One of the troubling things is not having any controll over the FAFSA process or funds. All I do is fill out the form, they choose the lender, they keep all disbursements (11,000 disbursement-2200 tuition per class every 9 weeks) in an escrow account, which means that they are making interest on money that I am responsible to pay back with interest upon completion or withdrawel.
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