We are international students who cannot fly to the U.S. for our first year at Mount Holyoke College due to COVID-19 and the shutting down of all U.S. consulates around the world. Most of us are first-generation students or low-income students who have made every mental and monetary effort to attend this college.
Not only does this affect us, but it also affects our parents, who are contributing more than they can afford to this college because they have trusted the institution.
On July 17, Mount Holyoke College released revised financial aid packages for everyone. Despite constantly emailing the student financial aid office asking about if they would change our grants or take away our aid or reduce our aid. Unfortunately, we were only met with vague and generic responses. This was before they sent us our revised packages. The deadline for deferral was July 13, 2020, and we could not make the decision to defer without viewing our aid packages. Unfortunately, we had to make the deferral decision without being able to view our financial aid packages.
Now our parents’ contribution remains the same despite us being remote for fall. We are not applying for campus housing and neither are we using up the meal plan, but still paying the same amount to the College amid a pandemic because why? The revised financial aid has been changed and in fact reduced by the same amount as our room and board!
Basically, we are being asked to pay the College as if we were on campus for room and board. Our grant aid has been reduced to the exact amount that is equivalent to room and board. Technically, we were not supposed to pay this amount of the bill as per grant aid that was initially given at the time of our admission.
We did not ask for a global pandemic. We did not make the choice of not getting a visa. MHC is monetizing this pandemic and making us pay the exact same amount as before for online classes at midnight. Besides attending an online semester in our home country, we have to pay hefty bills to this institution because this is how international students are treated? To all the privileged people out there, we know you do not need to advocate for us but as a community you do hold a responsibility and your words carry weight. This is a global pandemic and we look forward to strengthening the Mount Holyoke community together in this miserable world crisis.
I wish I had thought through my admission decision once. I wish I was not guilty of burdening my parents like this. I wish I was privileged enough. I wish I had dreamt smaller.
- International students from the class of 2024