Back to Basics:

As a new undergraduate freshman one of the most important things you can do is getting to know your financial aid advisor.  This is especially important if you have any grants, scholarships, loans, or are going join a work study program.  This advisor is going to be your key in making sure all your necessary forms are completed on time and the money is received from it's respective places.  

The first step, as a student, is making a personal visit to them.  I know that calling and emailing is less time consuming but to them you are just a name or a student id number among hundreds or thousands of students, so by meeting them face to face you can move beyond that id number and become a person, maybe even a person that they may want to take the extra mile to help, if needed.  

I'll explain by example why this is so important.  While attending college in my sophmore year I struggled to come up with the full tuition needed.  I had a private student loan that due to lack of credit was reduced by $7,000 less than what I needed and I was never notified until my tuition was late.  This was a serious problem and I didn't know where to turn especially since I didn't even know who my financial aid advisor was, so I knew that he/she didn't know me.  To cut a long story short I walked right into their office and introduced myself, explained my problem and asked for help in how to go about correcting it.  I even followed up every week by stopping in to check on the progress of any applications I filled out, forms that I had completed, or just to give a friendly hello.  In the end the problem was sorted out because of my diligence in the matter and because I became a person to my financial aid advisor and even a person that they wanted to help.  They point of the story is if I had introduced myself to my financial aid advisor at the beginning of my Freshman year, none of this may have happened.  

Remember to go back to the basics and say hello.  Meeting and getting to know your financial aid advisor just might be the key to your financial success in college.

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