Two who were overwhelmed are moving on

Nina Santos was so naive about college when she enrolled at Boston University, she says, that she didn't know she could drop the trigonometry class she was failing and help save her grade point average.

So in the fall of 1998, her sophomore year, Santos's grades dipped just below the GPA she needed to keep a $10,000 scholarship included in her financial aid package.

Her parents, a cook and a secretary on Cape Cod, had no money to help.

So she dropped out of school.

Santos worked the next six years as a nanny and cocktail waitress. She says when the school told her she owed $5,000, she tried to make payments. She admits she was inconsistent.

In 2004, BU got a court judgment against her for about $6,000, with 12 percent annual interest. Though she makes payments of $40 a month, she hasn't made a dent in the balance.

BU refused to release her transcript, so Santos couldn't transfer her credits to a less expensive school. Between that and the debt itself, she couldn't find a way to return to school until last year, when she enrolled in the nursing program at Middlesex Community College.

Her life has taken a positive turn. Now 28, she is engaged to an electrician, and they have a 2-year-old son. She is on the dean's list. Still, she is frustrated that she must retake several classes she took at BU, and the debt still looms over her.

"Why is it worth it to them to do this to me? My $5,000 is nothing to a school that big, but to me that $5,000 is a big deal," Santos said, tearing up.

Six months ago, Santos called BU, hoping to negotiate to lower her bill. She says someone in the registrar's office mentioned her withdrawal date as Feb. 11, 1999. Santos swears she withdrew at the beginning of January, before classes started, which normally would trigger a full refund for the spring semester.

Santos says BU has refused to explain the charges to her, adding to her frustration. Both BU and the attorney handling the collection, Richard S. Daniels Jr., declined to comment on the case but said they always investigate reports of billing mistakes.

"Our philosophy is that we don't want a penny more than they owe us, and we don't want to take their last penny," said Vincent Simonelli, BU's director of collections and student loans.

But Byrdsong, who lives in Dorchester, says she sent the forms, with signature, at least four times -- every time the school sent another notice that they were missing. She put them in the mail, she says. She brought it to the office in person. Her mother, a community outreach worker, faxed them twice.

In January 2004, Suffolk told Byrdsong a federal grant and a federal loan she was anticipating had been canceled in the absence of the forms. That left her with about a $5,000 balance.

Byrdsong is the first in her family to go to college. She didn't have any money to cover the lost aid, so she immediately transferred to Pine Manor, a women's college in Brookline, because they were willing to accept her for the spring semester with only a few days' notice.

When collectors started calling, she told them she didn't owe the money. Then, she admits, she ignored the letters. She didn't even realize she'd been sued and that the school had obtained a default judgment against her for $6,600 in June 2005.

In her family, she said, "No one knows to say, 'You should read these letters. You should go to court to give your side.' "

Byrdsong was grateful to Pine Manor for taking her in, but dissatisfied with the academics. She yearned to transfer to Simmons College. Simmons, however, wouldn't accept her without her Suffolk transcript. She didn't see how she could get it, so she stayed for two years at Pine Manor, feeling stuck.

Finally, a year ago, Byrdsong reached Christine A. Perry , Suffolk's assistant dean of enrollment management. Perry met with her and quickly agreed to a compromise. Byrdsong paid $1,312, most of it borrowed from a family friend. Suffolk wrote off the rest and released her transcript.

"I wanted to help this family since I saw no gain in preventing the student from taking advantage of a generous scholarship opportunity at another school," Perry wrote in a statement to the Globe.

Byrdsong, 21, started at Simmons in January and will graduate in the spring. A biology major, she hopes to earn a PhD and become a genetics researcher.

Still, she says the Suffolk experience cast a shadow over her academic career.

"College would have been so different," she said.

MARCELLA BOMBARDIERI