Why is it that the administration at V-State (bursary, financial aid, registrar, etc.) are consistently unwilling to provide assistance to even the most elementary of problems? 1) There is a registration issue with my student account that causes my transcript to appear as though I have failed to earn the attempted hours for a class, even if the grade received for the class was an A; Financial Aid has been aware of this problem for 3 years, and have assured me that the issue would never be a problem. I started out this semester with an email informing me that I had been suspended from receiving financial aid on account of my poor grades. After returning to the financial aid office to see what I could do to try to fix it, the woman that helped me last year informed me that there is a person that could resolve this issue in a matter of minutes, but according to notes on my account, she didnt escalate it to him last year because he was about to go to lunch. 2) While sitting at this same Financial Aid advisors desk, she called the person that specializes in resolving the issue I faced with my student information. He had presumably just recently returned from his (year-long) lunch break, because the Financial Aid advisor spent the first ten minutes of the phone call asking him about his lunch, and whether or not din-din was good today. 3) Before leaving the Financial Aid office, the same Financial Aid advisor scolded me for not maintaining good grades, and warned me that I will not be eligible for financial aid if I did not improve my grades. I have a 3.7 GPA; I briefly re-explained the situation (see 1). This concerns me, because that same advisor had literally JUST gotten done escalating this very specific issue to the very specific person responsible for fixing it. 4) Because of the issues in my student account, the registration process is extremely buggy, and sometimes changes wont stick when made on the student-access pages online. I added a class, decided that it would not fit into my schedule, and subsequently removed it before the end of the allotted drop/add period so that I wouldnt be charged for the class. The drop appeared to be successful on my end, but because of registration issues, it did not apply correctly to my student account. I found out after drop/add ended, contacted the Registrars office (wish I had gotten the name of the lady that helped me, because she was actually really helpful in explaining the situation to me), and was told that I needed to have a form completed in order to process the removal of the class, and that I needed to verify whether or not Id be refunded for the class with the Bursary. As the Registrars office does not process refunds, this is entirely understandable; Im totally not complaining about that. 5) I called the Bursary to discuss whether or not I will be receiving a refund for the class in question. The woman that answered the phone asked for my information, and said that shed be able to tell me once she accessed my account. Upon verifying my information and taking a brief look at my account, she asked for my phone number and said shed call me back later today or tomorrow with an answer. I asked if there was any reason why the situation could not be addressed right then and there on the phone (peace of mind, ya know? I already got screwed on financial aid for the semester, and I really dont want to pay for a class that Ive never attended on top of that), to which the woman on the phone replied Ill just call you back and hung up the phone. 6) The woman called back (to my surprise) only a few minutes later. I thanked her for the quick callback time, and asked what the results of her research were, to which she replied Oh, I dont know, youre going to have to talk to so-and-so, I dont handle things like that. Needless to say, I am less than impressed with this entire exchange. I need coffee.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 20:06:38 +0000