Cuyahoga Community College

***Do not attend this school***My daughter has attended 3 semesters at this school with the understanding her credits would be transferable in some way depending on the next school she transferred to. She also had a very special set of circumstances (was adopted as an infant into a very abusive home which she fled & has lived on her own since 2009) but was ran in circles repeatedly being told she couldn’t get any aid without the adopters financial information… finally getting the aid without their information due to her circumstances then each semester told she was dropped from classes (at the end of the semester) due to non payment due to not having turned in everything. She’s turned in the same forms/​documents/​etc repeatedly. Each time she battled with these people until they realized that actually they had been paid via grants & allowed her to finish the first 2 semesters. Just before the 3^rd semester her father & I adopted her back in part so that we could help her more with college, health insurance, etc. She changed her last name with the adoption. Her name was changed with the SSA in October & apparently that caused more conflict with TriC although it was our understanding grants had again been paid already. We re-​submitted the FAFSA with our income information but it was so late into the semester they said she’d likely be dropped anyway so I began making calls & sending emails trying to find out how to keep her in school, offering to pay whatever was owed. No one has yet to answer me! With only a week & half left in the semester she was dropped from her classes. It took hours of phone calls/​emails to finally learn it was because her father and I earn too much for her to qualify for grants. That was fine, we will pay her tuition. We set about to trying to find out how to get her back into her classes (her next class being on Tues 11÷29÷11) & were told someone would contact me to tell me how to make the tuition payment of a little more than $ 1000 & that my daughter should bring in various documents on Tues to get back into class. All of these were documents she’d already given them several times. One was our signature on yet another FAFSA form! We did as they said, K stayed up all night gathering everything together & worrying about being able to finish the semester then spent half the day Tues at Finaid office only to be told she needed more of the same documents then told, oops… no, all that was for filing for aid which we already knew she didn’t qualify for & no one called to instruct me how to pay though I stayed by the phone all day. They then told her she needed a different set of forms in order to go back to class but it was too late at that point to make her class. She was also told at that point that none of her credits can be transferred and we will be billed for this semester’s tuition even if she doesn’t finish the semester. I’ve since made several more calls/​written more emails trying to sort this out and PAY THEM so that she can finish the semester… understand if/​why they’d lead her to believe the credits were of normal transfer status only to now tell her they aren’t & to understand how on earth they have been so incompetent as to leave us in this situation to start with. We have always, from the start, tried to pay them but they seem intent on dropping her no matter what we do! There are many different things going on here… we are beyond sick that K worked so hard and we all tried so hard to do the right thing yet these semesters are down the drain… a waste of not only our time, her time, but financial aid monies.

At first I thought the staff was rude and obnoxious, but I found out that not all of them where like that. Coming from a smaller college I found myself a little intimidated. I had the feeling that the staff had attitudes about you not knowing where you’re going or what your supposed to be doing. Once found the right people to help me, my express became more enjoyable.