Clearing the Decks (or the Desk) -- The Return of the Return of More Questions Answered.
Sorry all, between dealing with emails (over 200 a day), phone calls (don't even ask), questions from my staff, and just trying to spend a little time with my family, the last two weeks have been INSANE!!! So, I haven't been blogging...
Bad me!
But, just like a bad fungus (or a plague -- see: Passover starting tomorrow at the end of this post), I'm back!
So, to begin with, let me deal with the backlog of questions since last I posted:
Serene (and others) had questions about the medical insurance and whether or not it is covered by MIT financial aid. As you may know, MIT does require that all students attending the Institute have medical (hospital) insurance. If you have your own medical insurance coverage, MIT is happy to accept proof of this coverage in lieu of our own medical coverage. If not, you will be billed for the MIT Student Extended Insurance Plan (once in the Fall and once in the Spring). Details on what constitutes acceptable coverage, and what expenses are covered by the medical plan are available at http://mit.edu/medical/p-student.html. (Note that the Student Extended Insurance Plan is different than the basic MIT Student Medical Plan which covers urgent care - information on this is also at the same web page).
As for the financial aid repercussions: since medical insurance is considered a responsibility of all parents, we do not provide financial aid coverage at MIT by and large to accommodate this expense. For 2004-2005, the annualized cost of the coverage was $1,440 (for twelve months of coverage). Rates for next year have not yet been announced (to my knowledge), although they will likely be marginally higher. If meeting this cost would present an overwhelming hardship for your parents and you have no comparable coverage available (including public health insurance), you should be in touch with your financial aid counselor and keep this in mind when planning for what expenses you may need to cover through summer employment
There was a “question on behalf of someone” on a previous post which read in part:
how can I apply for financial aid from MIT if my family does not pay taxes, has never paid taxes, we have limited incomes, which although above the minimum taxable threshold, is not within the tax purview of the taxation authorities, and is barely subsistence level for a middle class large family.
What documentation should I produce, other than our own sworn personal statements of our finances, which will be acceptable to MIT (under the assumption that MIT has little reason to trust such statements - as falsehood for material gains is not an essential characteristics of peoples in poorer nations alone, which is why even in the US one is required to produce official verifiable documentations and one's word isn't enough). I do not have any officially verifiable income documentation, like the majority of the people in the nation.
You do need to provide some kind of documentation of income, whether that is simply a letter from your employer (appropriate for International Students), a copy of payment stubs, copies of checks, or simply a statement from you explaining why no other kind of statement will be available. We do ask that you do what you can to document income; we are not interested in placing insurmountable hoops but we do want to know what income is received so we can do a fair and equitable analysis.
I had no takers for CPW pics (how sad, how sad!!!), but Ben and others identified that you can see all of the CPW pics others have taken at http://mit2009.com/. (yay, Anthony!! w00t!)
Meder wanted to know about when we would be providing finalized aid awards (presumably with the Self Help award broken into loan and work). The answer to this is complicated as it depends on what is missing from your file. If you did not turn in your 2004 tax returns when your application for financial aid was originally reviewed (or some other piece of paper was missing, other than the Student Information and Self Help forms), we are reviewing your file as the information is received and if there are any changes, we will notify you by mail immediately.
If all you are/were missing is the Self Help and Student Information Review Forms and you have turned these in, we will wait until June 1 or so to mail the revised awards (since we want to only process these for those of you definitively coming). For international students, we do understand that you may have student visa issues which need to be finalized, and cannot be if the award letter from us says “tentative“, so we will likely produce your letters first (and potentially will begin processing yours sooner than June 1).
On a related note, Meder and Saad asked whether Autumn would be adjusted with the receipt of these forms, and in later feedback noted that it is being updated!
So, that's that! I think I am up to date.
But now I have an etiquette question for you. How many Livestrong (and Livestrong clone type) bracelets can one person wear without looking, hmm, a tad bizarre? I tried seven the other night and it looked offensive. Anxiously awaiting your reply.
And for those of you who will be celebrating the Passover holiday, have a sweet Pesach (for a list of MIT Passover events, look here).