Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I only saw my father for two hours a day and my mother for three hours a day. I ate with my father while he drilled me with math practice before school, and I did not see him again until late at night, exhausted from a 14-hour shift at his restaurant. My mother worked night shifts at a hospital, so I only saw her getting ready as I was about to go to bed and make my lunch for school with black spots below her eyes early in the morning when I woke up. These routines were necessary to afford living in the Bay Area, one of the most expensive places to live in the United States.
When I received my Vanderbilt acceptance email, I was overjoyed until I looked at the financial aid I received: $0. Only after I emailed the financial office twice did I receive a small, $3,000 National Merit scholarship to count toward the exorbitant $94,274 cost of attendance. I was elated by my acceptance but also devastated at the thought of paying that much for an education. My mother had to work an extra four hours on top of her already burdening nine-hour shifts to afford to send me to Vanderbilt. I worked at a restaurant all day the entire summer, serving food and being yelled at by customers. Moreover, two months into college, my parents’ home country, Nepal, went up in flames, both politically and physically. My father sent a good chunk of our savings to friends and family whose villages were destroyed and whose lives were ruined.
I contacted the financial aid office again, earnestly begging them to help my family during these difficult times. I have heard stories of how my friends received financial aid because of how circumstances changed within their families across the globe, and I realized that this situation fit into that category. All I received back was a three-sentence email explaining that I was still ineligible for need-based assistance based on my College Scholarship Service profile. I didn’t even receive an apology. I applied for a number of jobs on campus, just to be met with rejections left and right…