How Not to Apply for a Loan

There is something really disconcerting about moving to one of the most expensive cities in the world without an income. When I received all of my financial materials from Columbia, I noticed that I got no financial aid whatsoever. I guess I was better at sales than I ever realized.

Just to spice things us, when you apply for student housing, it turns out that certain people are ineligible. Namely those students who live within 250 miles of campus. In case you were wondering, my address in Washington, DC is 231.58 miles from Columbia. I can just imagine some housing minion stamping a big red DENIED* across my housing application. The footnote would read in tiny letters: *commuter. So now I need both money and a place to live. Of course money is the first priority given that there are a number of adorable locations in Central Park to set up shop out of a cardboard box. I hear that people do it all the time.

Contrary to popular belief, deciphering a 36-page Comprehensive Educational Financing Plan from Columbia University is easier said than done. Columbia sets up a list of potential costs including tuition, travel expenses, room & board and estimates that the ten months spent in New York will cost around $61,877.

Holy shit.

I'm not great with money. I spend a little more than I should, I don't have a 401k and the only reason I set up an IRA was so I wouldn't owe the government thousands of dollars in taxes (oops! W-2s confuse me). At the same time, I have never been in debt in my life. I always pay the bill for my sole credit card 2 weeks early and on the last day of the month I am already anally sending my rent check to Borger Management, even though I have until the 10th. For me, debt is up there with rattlesnakes, airplane turbulence and those giant light brown cockroaches that my sister(Johanna)'s dog likes to play with.

But Johanna sat me down and said, "listen. This isn't a big deal. So many people take out loans for grad school, so it's very commonplace and not that bad of a process."

So I sat down with my mother (she's a CFO, thanks be to God) and my Financial Plan book. It completely mystified me, which only enhanced my "why the h-e-double-hockeysticks did they accept me?" attitude. I read, reread and finally narrowed it down to two different loans that seemed comparable and hopped online to complete the loan application. Citibank or Accessgroup? I went onto the Accessgroup website and filled out all of my information and just when I hit submit, this big error message flashed across my screen. Weird. So I decided that instead of risking another error message after 25 minutes of typing and tabbing, I would just go to the Citibank website and fill out their form. I did. It went through without an error message, and all was right in the world. Daisies were blooming, a Tufted Tit-Mouse was chirping in the backyard, a rainbow stretched across the sky, and I was the pot of gold, curled up on the couch, serenely napping.

Four days later I got a letter in the mail from Citibank. I was rejected. They wrote that it wasn't a result of my credit score (phew) but rather when Citibank asked Columbia if I was going to be a student and therefore eligible for student loans, they said....NO!

I knew it! They realized their mistake and opted to rescind my acceptance letter. Maybe they found out that I'm no good with the Educational Financing Plan? Could they have intended my acceptance for a Tiffany Berry? Just a couple of the many reasons that occurred to me in the moment.

In the end, I talked to one person at Columbia who sent me to another person who sent me to yet another person who told me, but not in these words, that I'm an idiot. Apparently the Accessgroup loan had gone through despite the ERROR message. Columbia approved me for an Accessgroup loan, so when Citibank asked for approval, they were unable to give it, because I'm clearly not eligible for 2 loans of $60,000.

Lucky for me, because the thought of being $120,000 in debt makes me feel a bit faint.