patzycline
New Member
- Jurisdiction
- Michigan
Long story - I'll try to make it as concise as possible.
I decided to go back to school after my undergrad for a graduate degree (MS) in clinical health psychology. I was living in Charleston, SC and moved to Michigan to attend school. Before I accepted the offer at U of M, I applied several other places. When I got my acceptance letter at my current school, shortly after I was sent a financial summary *tailored to me and my out-of-state status*. I still have this document in writing. It quoted me about $8000 a semester less a out of state tuition $4500 scholarship, which came to about $3500. I didn't pursue any other schools financially because this one made the most sense, and conveniently Michigan was the school I happened to feel suited me best. But mostly it was a financial issue as I did not want to go into too much debt and could handle the tuition they quoted me. In writing. Based on my specific details.
The document was a very specific number of what I could expect my tuition to be for the upcoming semesters. Of course, tuition at every school varies from semester to semester a percentage or two. That is to be expected.
When the time came to go to school, I have my money ready to pay. I check my account and see that the tuition is coming up as $12,000, less my $4500 scholarship. For weeks, the administration scrambles to figure out what is going on. One let it slip that it was probably an error.
I got it escalated to the head of the financial aid / registrar / whatever, and they were able to look around and find me an additional $5000 to be split between this semester and next.
First of all, they definitely would not have given me any money at all unless they were admitting fault so I know someone messed up. I was very appreciative for this, but there's still a few issues and am thinking I might need to speak to a lawyer because:
a) My tuition still ended up being 100% more than I was initially personally quoted for this semester. Some might say ~3,500 is an unreasonble amount for grad school tuition, HOWEVER remember that there was a scholarship applied to that. So I was under the impression the tuition was around $8000 and that seemed normal and I had no reason to look further as this was supposed to be direct from the source information
b) There has been no mention of any financial help for the next two years of my program based on this
b) You can't transfer once you start grad school. If I end up deciding it's too expensive, I would have wasted all this time and would have to start my MS over again.
So basically, TLDR; I made a major life decision and moved to Michigan to attend grad school based on a school-provided personalized estimate of tuition. It ends up being 4x what I was quoted and the school admitted to this. What should I do? I'm not usually the kind of person who jumps into litigation but do I have a case? If so, what kind of lawyer should I approach? I would not have jumped into this situation and incurred all this debt if I had been fully informed.
I decided to go back to school after my undergrad for a graduate degree (MS) in clinical health psychology. I was living in Charleston, SC and moved to Michigan to attend school. Before I accepted the offer at U of M, I applied several other places. When I got my acceptance letter at my current school, shortly after I was sent a financial summary *tailored to me and my out-of-state status*. I still have this document in writing. It quoted me about $8000 a semester less a out of state tuition $4500 scholarship, which came to about $3500. I didn't pursue any other schools financially because this one made the most sense, and conveniently Michigan was the school I happened to feel suited me best. But mostly it was a financial issue as I did not want to go into too much debt and could handle the tuition they quoted me. In writing. Based on my specific details.
The document was a very specific number of what I could expect my tuition to be for the upcoming semesters. Of course, tuition at every school varies from semester to semester a percentage or two. That is to be expected.
When the time came to go to school, I have my money ready to pay. I check my account and see that the tuition is coming up as $12,000, less my $4500 scholarship. For weeks, the administration scrambles to figure out what is going on. One let it slip that it was probably an error.
I got it escalated to the head of the financial aid / registrar / whatever, and they were able to look around and find me an additional $5000 to be split between this semester and next.
First of all, they definitely would not have given me any money at all unless they were admitting fault so I know someone messed up. I was very appreciative for this, but there's still a few issues and am thinking I might need to speak to a lawyer because:
a) My tuition still ended up being 100% more than I was initially personally quoted for this semester. Some might say ~3,500 is an unreasonble amount for grad school tuition, HOWEVER remember that there was a scholarship applied to that. So I was under the impression the tuition was around $8000 and that seemed normal and I had no reason to look further as this was supposed to be direct from the source information
b) There has been no mention of any financial help for the next two years of my program based on this
b) You can't transfer once you start grad school. If I end up deciding it's too expensive, I would have wasted all this time and would have to start my MS over again.
So basically, TLDR; I made a major life decision and moved to Michigan to attend grad school based on a school-provided personalized estimate of tuition. It ends up being 4x what I was quoted and the school admitted to this. What should I do? I'm not usually the kind of person who jumps into litigation but do I have a case? If so, what kind of lawyer should I approach? I would not have jumped into this situation and incurred all this debt if I had been fully informed.
