Hello everyone,
This problem is causing a significant amount of stress since none of my family or my professors at my current university (Southeast Asia) is familiar with this type of problem.
Basically, I was accepted into Columbia University SEAS in early February and was required, for reasons unknown, to pay my tuition deposit by February 25. I paid the tuition deposit since I was uncertain about my acceptance in other universities at the time. I have now received a financial offer from UC Berkeley and would like to attend UCB instead. How should I proceed with accepting the UCB offer?
- Who should I contact to talk about my withdrawal: the financial offer or my Columbia advisor? The issue with contacting my Columbia advisor is that I need to go through the New Student process and make a student account. Is that wrong, given that I want to withdraw and not become a new student?
- Should I complete my withdrawal from Columbia before proceeding with UCB? Would there be any repercussions if I do both processes at the same time?
- For family reasons, I would prefer to go to Columbia, but I cannot afford it and they did not provide any financial aid. Now that I have been given a funded UCB offer, is it possible to use this information to negotiate for funding from Columbia? Who should I contact for this negotiation?
I hope you all can help me with this problem. If you have any additional helpful remarks or comments about related problems, please share! Thank you for helping in advance!
You can certainly withdraw by sending a letter (maybe email will do) explaining that you are not intending to enroll and asking for a refund on your deposit. It is not likely that you will be able to get it back but this would be an official notification that you do not intend to enroll. You must not register in their student system and register for classes or they will charge you the rest of the tuition.
Don’t do both. make a decision about where you plan to go (by the way you are not obliged to make that decision until April 15 and you should not have had to make the deposit at Columbia until then particularly if they did not offer you any funding).
It is unlikely that you can get a financial aid offer from Columbia by saying that UCB has given you an award. They have already made those decisions and probably wont’ change them. However, if you want to try, then contact the office of graduate admissions in SEAS and ask.
The April 15 agreement only applies to offers of funding - if Columbia didn’t offer OP any funding, then they could ask for a deposit whenever. February 25 is very early, though.
Is this for a master’s or PhD program? With a professional master’s, there’s probably an admissions office that you can contact (by e-mail or phone) letting them know that you are withdrawing your acceptance and have chosen to instead attend a university that gave you a funded offer. You are very unlikely to get that deposit back. Check the agreement to see if it says it was nonrefundable.
If it’s an academic master’s or a PhD, the departmental secretary is the person to contact. It’s also a courtesy to let the professor who would’ve been your mentor/PI know as well.
Thank you two so much for providing advice! Based on the responses, it looks like I should contact both the admissions office and my mentor/PI.
@xraymancs It was already mentioned that the tuition deposit was nonrefundable so that ship has sailed. In order to find out my advisor, I first need to create a student account. Would that be going too far? Is there a chance I would be charged the rest of the tuition just for making a student account WITHOUT registering for classes?
@juillet Thank you for the clarification regarding deadlines; I was also wondering about that myself. This is for master’s. Similarly, to find out who is my mentor, I need to create a student account first. Is there any risk towards doing this?
@juillet - of course, you are correct. As you say, the February deadline seems a bit aggressive.
@royalon06 - If you don’t register then it is probably OK. Let me note though that UCB is offering funding and that indicates a stronger desire to have you attend. They also have an excellent engineering program.