Student Loan Bastards

[New Horizon]

Post your student loan horror stories here.

 

Mine? I've been dealing with the ineptness of the National Student Loan Centre since May. What am I trying to do? Something very simple it would seem...apply for Interest Relief until I have a steady income from my home business.

 

Yet, the contiously find ways to make the process more and more difficult.

 

They lose my information and then tell me I didn't send it. The application gets held up in the mail and is one day late...forcing me to reapply.

 

I'm on my forth attempt and they just left a message for me yesterday telling me that my income appears "high". Considering I have no bloody income, that's quite the audacious statement.

 

Sorry for the rant but I'm am major big time pissed off the face of this planet.

 

They're getting a nice big old fat letter from me.

[Macsen]

Oh dear, those twats. I remember well going into the third year and finding out, in my first seminar, that I had not paid for my education!

 

It was on a direct debit you bastards! £3,000 quid, how could you miss that? Rant... rave... gnaw...

[oDDity]

Ha, my last year as a student was the last year of student grants - that's grants as in gratis, free, no pay back. THat's what you get for being so young.

[Ishtvan]

I just hate university accounting in general. As a grad student, I have a fellowship that pays my tuition. My appartment is also university owned, which means my rent gets added to the student account. Guess what they often do?

 

If you guessed "apply the money I paid for rent to my tuition bill that I'm not supposed to pay, while leaving my rent unpaid that month and accruing late fees without telling me," you would be correct!

 

Then there was the time I was supposed to get paid for TA'ing (teaching assistant), got one month's pay and then was automatically fired by the computer for no apparent reason without anyone's knowledge, resulting in me not getting paid for the rest of the TAship until several months after it ended. When I finally was paid, they sent the check to the wrong department.

[Fingernail]

I'm going to have a vast debt approaching or even exceeding £30,000 by the time I've been through university.

 

It's just par for the course, I'll have to excel at whatever I end up doing in order to pay it back.

[SneaksieDave]

I guess I shouldn't really contribute here. I got paid (and rather well, considering) to go to college and grad school.

 

Oh wait! I sure paid at that tech school though! $11k! *shakes fist* *belongs*

[DeepOmega]

I guess I shouldn't really contribute here.  I got paid (and rather well, considering) to go to college and grad school. 

 

Oh wait!  I sure paid at that tech school though!  $11k!  *shakes fist*  *belongs*

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Ha! Tech school indeed. Real gangsters get into industries where all you need is a portfolio and a connection in a company. My boss has been trying to convince me to drop out for a year now.

 

Maybe if they offer a signing bonus.

[god_is_my_goldfish]

Just this last week, I received a financial aid notification, that included not only the student loan, but the parent loan (which i don't want) as well. I called them up about it and they said both loans had been somehow "nullified," after trying to get in contact with a particular counselor for a week, it turns out that the student loan was probably never canceled in the first place.

[Maximius]

I guess I shouldn't really contribute here.  I got paid (and rather well, considering) to go to college and grad school. 

 

Oh wait!  I sure paid at that tech school though!  $11k!  *shakes fist*  *belongs*

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

I did exactly the same thing, I blew 11K$ too at a "Technical College." Here in the States its relatively easy for anyone with access to bucks and a few degrees floating around to open an Institute or a College in an old strip mall off of the main highway. Suckers roll in happy to be finally getting some sort of continuing education only to find themselves buried in loan debt and holding worthless diplomas. And this school was *approved* by the Federal loan people.

 

Course I went on to real school, and real school debt. Being a broke off campus non-traditional student I borrowed heavily to live and still had to work. Ate instant soup a LOT. Drank a lot for the extra carbs too.

 

I just recently refinanced my mountain of debt before the HUGE rate increase, 3.75 to 5.2% !!!, in July. One more lash across the face of low and middle income people, they keep coming these days.

[Ishtvan]

SneaksieDave, I'm curious, how did you manage to get paid for going to Undergrad? Was that thru ROTC or your employer or something?

[FishFace]

I know in Britain you can get money for going to college if your parents have a low income. I reckon if I'd been two years older or so I might've managed as my dad was off work for a while when his company laid off loads of contractors. Unfortunately, my Uni woes are still to come. At the moment, my job pays for graphics cards and parties, but the darkness awaits me.

[DeepOmega]

SneaksieDave, I'm curious, how did you manage to get paid for going to Undergrad?  Was that thru ROTC or your employer or something?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Scholarships everywhere, man, if you have a high enough high school GPA and write good essays. That's how I'm doing it. Full ride scholarship from the good state of Maryland, plus a stipend from the National Merit Scholarship people.

[SneaksieDave]

open an Institute or a College in an old strip mall off of the main highway.

Yikes, that's a perfect description.

 

SneaksieDave, I'm curious, how did you manage to get paid for going to Undergrad?  Was that thru ROTC or your employer or something?

Like DeepOmega said, scholarships and grants. I had several, and just one covered tuition. "Back then" (1990-95), tuition was only about $1.5k/semester, and I was getting $4k/semester, so I was able to pocket $2.5k/semester as "living costs." Not bad for a college student, really. I think by the end of undergrad, I had banked more than $12k (which ironically just about covers the shitty tech school). Grad was a fellowship deal.

[obscurus]

Here in Australia we have a sheme where you pay for your degree out of your tax (HECS Higher Education Contribution Scheme) - the government pays for your degree, but you pay a higher tax rate until the degree is payed back, and they also adjust the size of the debt for CPI increases, so even though I have been paying off my degree in tax, I still owe more than I started with. It is like running on a treadmill - you never get anywhere.

At least you don't have to pay extra tax if you are below a certain income threshold...

Still, the government owns my arse