My Fall Financial “Aid”

Try “Financial Pain in the Fucking Ass”

Bill is due on October 1st. Here, September 28th, I finally get my aid packaged. It’s been sitting at “Final Processing Stage” since September 10th. Wonderful turnaround for the digital age, eh? I think it would have been faster for me to send a handwritten note to Washington on the Pony Express.

If I lived in California.

So, my bill is $3582.00. Here’s my fall aid breakdown:
Grant: $278.00
Workstudy: $1000.00
Subsidized Loan: $2750.00
Unsubsidized Loan: $1000.00
Total = $5028.00

That’s great, right? Expect I have to get a job to get workstudy. So -$1000.00
That leaves me with $4028.00

Now, I won’t actually get the full loan amount. There’s a 1% difference,s o take out ~$37.50

So, in actuality, I’ll get $3990.50. You take out tuition…. I get a refund of $408.50.

I’m supposed to use this to pay for rent how? I was hoping that I could cut back work to maybe 20 hours a week (Gives me about $140 a week, or $560 a month) but that won’t pay for my $300/month rent, food, gas, etc…

Thanks, Financial Aid. Looks like I won’t be able to focus on my studies because I will be working the entire time.

The funny thing is, this is based on “need”. My EFC shot up from 3764 to 5243 this year, because I worked ~60 hours a week for half of last year. So I could apparently contribute more. Well, DUH. I wasn’t in school. =____=