WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO OVER THE PAST WEEK:

Wow, where to begin? Okay, first off, for those who don't know the story, I am not attending Rutgers this fall. The reason? I tried to trick them into charging me in-state tuition, and they caught me.

I really don't know what I was thinking. I started to use my uncle's Trenton address several months ago. I put it on my Rutgers application, even had my bills mailed there. This convinced the Rutgers' University financial aid office... for a while. However, when I was filling out my FAFSA like a year ago, I was still interested in attending either SUNY at Albany or SUNY at Buffalo. Naturally, if I had gone on to attend either college, I would have preferred to pay in-state New York tuition. So of course, I listed my Brooklyn address as my permanent address on my FAFSA. Apparently, someone at Rutgers was doing their job, caught the discrepency, and subsequently billed me out-of-state tuition.

The change of status letter had sat unopened on my desk for two weeks. I should have opened it, but I figured, everything's fine now. Nothing could possibly go wrong. When I finally found out about the change in status, something like three days before the semester was to start, I called Rutgers financial aid and disputed the truth. Everything pretty much came down to one question: Did I work in New Jersey or New York during the past year, and which state did I pay my taxes to? Of course, it was the latter. The financial aid person told me that I could still attend the fall semester, but I would have to pay out-of-state tuition while the matter was brought up to arbitration. I looked at the out-of-state rates, easily twice as much as the in-state costs, and quickly realized that I did not have the money in loans to pay the difference. Sure, I could have applied for emergency loans until I supposedly won the arbitration. However, if I were to lose the arbitration, which I thought likely since, well, I really wasn't a New Jersey resident, I would have been in the unenviable position of having to finish my degree at Rutgers while paying out-of-state tuition. Just way too much money.

(Con.)