Julie Tayag

Review of George Mason Review

I'd give a higher score, but unfortunately my expe...

I'd give a higher score, but unfortunately my experiences with the office of student financial aid taught me how disconnected some of the departments are with one another. I was told to have a dependency appeal filled out and was misinformed that I had to fill it out ASAP before my advisor would go out on vacation; turned out they already did, and I rushed to put together my documents for my appeal. I ran all over the whole campus trying to get documents from housing, CAPS, SSAC, and the police department. Housing wasn't sure about who was responsible for filling out reports, but thankfully they pulled through and got me the info I needed. CAPS would not provide me any documentation since I didn't come to them last semester for any help (I went to them several semesters ago), but they told me to try going to SSAC. The SSAC was very helpful and even provided me info about Stay Mason, which is my last hope in hopefully getting any extra aid. As for the police department, I was hoping to get a letter from one officer involved in an incident with my parents, but since he was out of town he was unable to type out a letter. I also paid $5 for a police summary that essentially said nothing about the incident. Thankfully, housing's documentation provided a detailed version of the event, so I should have never paid for that.

Overall, all that work lead to me getting denied a dependency appeal anyways. They probably figured that since the FAFSA was already filled, I may as well work with that. This would be fine had I even had a job to begin with that made enough money and tons of other scholarships to cover a whole year, but I really don't have that much to cover for even ONE semester and I don't even qualify for private student loans without a cosigner. I guess I should have parted with my parents before I even considered to fill out the FAFSA or just prepared for myself financially for college.

I do thank the SSAC and housing department very much for their help, but I'm losing hope. I've especially lost ALL faith in the OSFA; sometimes they give the wrong information or they just don't care to help. Freshman year, my parents didn't prepare for me financially at all, and my advisor was the least bit helpful, only referring to their websites rather than give in-depth explanations. Most of my freshman and sophomore year was me having to look up ALL the information on how private and federal student loans worked all by myself. It didn't help that my parents would give me the wrong information to put into FAFSA or private student loan applications, and it would take weeks for me to get it fixed because they had little to no understanding with how to fill in the information. And this summer, after breaking off with my parents, my advisor brushed off my parent's abuse in my personal statement for my dependency appeal as if it was silly. I just felt helpless and insulted and at that point I knew he was not going to be any help.

Honestly, I'd give 5-stars for housing and the SSAC for helping me out, as well as the game design department for being fairly responsive. They at least showed me to look at the positive side of things and were way more active in giving help to students when needed!