Throughout your tenure at BU, you may notice or receive notifications that you have a balance on your student account for tuition, fees, or health insurance. These will go away eventually, including any late fees charged. This happens because:
- When any BU student – Bachelor’s, Master’s, Doctoral, whatever the degree – registers for courses, the Registrar essentially tells Student Accounting to charge the student’s account for the requisite tuition and fees, which, in your cases, are all covered (including health insurance if you didn’t waive it)
- In a separate process, the financial aid office in the Graduate School reviews the aid confirmations submitted by the Department, which consist of details about your funding; the aid office conducts this review for each and every 1,400+ PhD students within the Graduate School. This can take a while, hence the balance.
- The aid office clears for Student Accounting.
- Student Accounting processes; the balances go away, including any late fees that may be applied to your account.
- Separately, if you’ve retained access to the SHIP Basic health insurance plan (provided automatically unless you waive it), the Graduate School will send payment to BU for your insurance. However, it may do so per semester. That means you’re charged the full amount in the fall, and the Graduate School will submit the second half of the payment in spring; your account may carry a charge of about $1700 from the fall to the spring. Ignore it. It’ll go away, and you won’t be charged fees.
- If, at any point, the charges on your account produce a hold that prevents you from registering for classes, dropping classes, etc., email the head of PhD financial aid Martin Gastmann (gastmann@bu.edu) and copy grsaid@bu.edu.