I’m lucky enough to have most of my tuition covered by financial aid. Without financial aid, some of us admittedly couldn’t even dream of attending NSU. As a private university, NSU is as expensive as it gets ― you’ll be lucky to keep your arms and legs after Razor’s done with you.
But why, I beg, is it so difficult to get financial aid? I’ve had enough trouble with NSU’s financial aid process to know that to get help, you have to put in a lot of effort. You fill out your FAFSA ― God forbid there’s an error on it ― and you get a letter in the mail detailing what NSU is offering you in scholarships, grants and loans. You accept all of the above, to find out that it still doesn’t cover everything. So you go to the One-Stop Shop to get some advice and, hopefully, some assistance. Spoiler alert: you get neither.
For all your hard work in high school ― maintaining high grades and accumulating community service hours ― the payoff isn’t exactly great. If you expect to get financial aid from NSU, you’re gonna have a bad time.
My first experience with the Office of Student Financial Assistance was through the 24/7 University Call Center. Once I called, I waited 30 minutes, which is understandable given the number of students who receive, and, presumably have problems with, financial aid. I was missing documents, and there were errors on my FAFSA, so I had to do several things to get the funding I needed to attend NSU.
I made countless phone calls and several trips back and forth from Boynton Beach to Davie over one of the errors on my FAFSA that for some reason wasn’t fixable, just to make sure my financial aid wasn’t jeopardized. The staff at the office was helpful, kind and understanding, but that’s about where the compliments end. As a first-time student at NSU, to say I’m dissatisfied with OSFA is a gross understatement.
I realized that if I wanted anything to get done, I’d have to do some intense harassing first. As is the norm with financial aid, there are an overwhelming number of forms that need to be filled out. SharkLink will tell you exactly which ones are missing, so when I needed to complete them, I did. Yet my financial aid wasn’t ready to be disbursed until I made a personal visit to OFSA to say, “Yes. Yes, I did the forms and faxed them to you.”
More recently, a hold was put on my account because of my outstanding balance. Holds like this are normal. However, it was unfair because I was told that there would be no consequences if I didn’t pay upfront. After several, what felt like thousand, phone calls and a fruitless visit to One-Stop Shop, the hold was removed ― and not after the visit, as I was told it would be, but after I paid the balance.
Why not just say, “Yes, you can register for classes, but be careful because a hold will be placed on your account, and there’s a $100 late fee.” But no, it’s, “Let’s not say anything about the hold and neglect to inform her of various payment plans so she has to empty her savings account to lift the hold.”
Every financial aid counselor will tell you something different about your financial aid or how to get more financial aid or what you need to do to keep your financial aid. What the office needs to understand is that I’m not looking for a gazillion opinions. And after they all tell you something different, it’s either wrong or there’s another important aspect they left out – like the fact that they’ll let you register for classes if your balance is below $1,000, but a hold will be placed on your account if you don’t pay it at the beginning of the semester. The counselors do their best to help, but what they need is a consolidated plan to help students, not each person telling a different story.
I never knew that loan amounts are based on the number of credit hours completed. To be completely honest, I have no idea if it’s even true. But why not tell me this in the beginning, since I carried credit from high school, so that I could plan accordingly? But I guess it’s not important, and, after all, I see no evidence of coordination with the Undergraduate Academic Advising Center, which is just upstairs.
It’s so difficult to get the help that you need that it doesn’t seem worth it in the end. Yeah, I’m paying a lot more to say that I went to the prestigious institution that is NSU, but it’s double the effort. I shouldn’t have to kill myself with schoolwork and, on top of that, kill myself to receive financial aid because the advice I get is either useless or wrong. If students didn’t need help understanding the ins and outs of the financial aid process, then there would be no need for OSFA in the first place. I go to the office to speak with a counselor because they’re the experts, not me. It’s not my job.
For what it’s worth, OSFA does help, but my problem is that most of the effort I put in with them goes to waste when it shouldn’t be that difficult to help students achieve their goals in the first place. Let’s face it, I could go to another school for a lot less and maybe even get a better education out of it because I’m not weighed down by overpriced tuition and inconsistent and inefficient “help.”
If NSU wants to keep those retention rates up and expand them, then there needs to be a simpler, streamlined process for students to deal with financial aid. The goal of OFSA should be to ease the burden of paying sky-high NSU tuition, housing and fees, not to add unnecessary stress.
