Update on what we're up to...
It's May 3rd and hopefully all of you who are planning on attending (new Freshmen, that is) have sent your reply form in. As my friends in Admissions close out their books on the class of 2009, we over here in Student Financial Services are still going strong, and will continue to be working with you during the next four years as undergraduates at MIT (and maybe longer for those of you going on to graduate school here).
As such, I thought I would give you an update as to what is going on in our office, and how we will be keeping busy in the next several months.
- Freshmen Reading: Since most Freshmen who will apply for aid have their awards by now, we consolidate all remaining Freshmen processing with one reader, Carmen Velez, who is the manager of our Freshmen process. She will be the person handling late applications, verifications of income, and other matters, while the rest of the staff work on...
- Upperclass and Graduate Student Reading: Now we turn our attention to the review of Upperclass Students (the over 1800 or so of you who will apply for the continuation of aid) and Graduate Students (the 1000 or so of you who need assistance from Federal and Private loans). During the next several months, we will be aggressively working with your applications so that you will have an answer in time for the Fall bill. Our first graduate award letters were mailed today. We plan on mailing International Award Letters for upperclass students no later than May 13th and we plan on mailing upperclass Award Letters for domestic students starting no later than June 15th. This will free the calendar for us to begin...
- Self Help and Student Information Review Form Processing: In mid-June and July we will process your Self-Help and Student Information Review forms (both upperclass and freshmen together). ***One exception: If you are an International Freshmen, your form will be processed in May.*** At that time, we will determine for which loan and work programs you have eligibility and we will tell you how to complete the necessary paperwork for these loans (or work). At some point in the Fall, we will notify you if you were selected to be funded by a donor-sponsored fund, and we may ask you to participate in writing a letter of appreciation to the donor who provided the funding for your MIT scholarship. After this is done we will begin to...
- Work on Next Year's Application and Process: Of course, there is a lot more that will happen between now and then, but we will be doing some thinking and brainstorming about what worked well this year and what could stand some improvement in our processing. This, of course, presents you with an opportunity to offer some feedback. Let me know how you found this year's process -- what worked for you, what didn't work so well. I would ask you for your honest (but constructive) feedback. We want to know if the financial aid process seemed overwhelming, manageable, just right... As one parent who frequents my blog put it succinctly in an email to me (hope it is OK that I am quoting you here), the process [if I can paraphrase] “seem[s] just about right; we can handle it, but we will have to work hard at it. That's how it should be.“ Do you agree?
Edited 1:14 AM, 5/4/2005
Elina has a great test linked to her blog where you can find what chemical element you most represent. I am Phosphorous. No surprise for me. Read the description and see if you don't think it fits me perfectly...
P... Phosphorous
You scored 42 Mass, 42 Electronegativity, 51 Metal, and 0 Radioactivity!
You're high energy... really high. Unfortunately, you don't always put your energy to calm constructive use and sometimes let it all out in intense bursts. If your energy can be harnessed however, you will produce truly great things. I suggest you take up a job that runs you ragged... like opening and closing a Sodium-Potassium pump. Socially you ought to hang with a crowd that is even more social than you. If you don't, well... all those people who spontaneously combusted throughout history... you guessed it, phosphorous people who didn't have enough to occupy themselves. When picking friends make sure most of them rated high on the electronegativity scale... Chlorines, Oxygens and whatnot.