sion of the bill. I think maybe you are telling me I am missing a provision of the bill. Mr. LEVIN. Congressman, my expression was really related to something I just read and not to something you had said. Mr. TAUKE. I am sorry. Thank you very much. Mr. FORD. Thank you very much. I now call on Bobbi Avancena, legislative assistant to Representative Peter Peyser. I will yield to the gentleman from New York. While Bobbi is approaching the table, I would like to mention that Bobbi has been working as legislative assistant on this legislation and she mentioned to me just a few days ago her own experiences in dealing with the student loan program. I was so impressed with what she had to say, I urged her to let the committee hear this testimony as well so that they could have a better idea of some of the practical applications and problems that are involved. So I would like to now ask her to tell her story if she would. STATEMENT OF MS. BOBBI AVANCENA, LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT TO HON. PETER PEYSER, REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW YORK [Prepared statement of Ms. Avancena follows:] Statement of Bobbi J. Avancena Legislative Assistant to I greatly appreciate the time this Subcommittee has given me this mming to speak about my personal experience with federal financial aid programs for students seeking a higher education. As a former student borrower who just last week made my last payment $5,000 worth of student loans, I believe that my personal experience, ich is still relevant even with the changes made by the Middle Income Sent Assistance Act, might help to put into a concrete human perspective way of the issues that have been discussed by this Subcommittee over the past several weeks. I grew up and attended public schools in Rockville, Maryland, a sub of Washington, D.C. My father was a civil servant and my mother, a housewife, did not work. I had two younger brothers. I graduated in the top four percent of my class. I was also tor of my high school newspaper and president of our school's largest nity service club. In short, I believe that I was a good student nd bad earned the opportunity of attending the college of my choice. I entered Drew University in Madison, New Jersey in September 1968. Se $3,000 tuition plus room, board and miscellaneous expenses was covered a corbination of a DAR history scholarship, a scholarship for selected Sestran offered by the college itself, and a $10,000 loan my parents had tomed from the Government Employees Financial Corporation. That $10,000 es loaned by semester, but was guaranteed to my father to be available act senester for the four years that I was in school. The summer between my freshman and sophomore year my father died. family income to that point was about $20,000. Our new income after his death from civil service suvivor annuities was about $7,500. Complicating our financial position that summer even further was the fact that my brother who was 11 months younger than I was scheduled to start school that fall. The week after my father died, my mother filled out the Parents Confidential Statement for the College Scholarship Service to see if I was eligible for what was at the time an Educational Opportunity Grant. In addition to our income, she listed our assets as a house, a modest capecod, valued at $40,000. Unfortunately, also counted as income was the $25,000 in life insurance. That figure was immediately reduced to $17,000 after funeral expenses and several oustanding debts such as paying off our car. Several weeks later, I received a notice that based on calculations by the College Scholarship Service, my college turned me down for assistance saying that my mother had too much money. This was a real blow to us because the Government Employees Financial Corporation had also cancelled the $10,000 which it said had been lent only to my father. My mother expected to use some of that $17,000 for my college education that year, but with two younger children and thus 11 more years of college to finance and with an income of only $7,500 she did not believe that the $17,000 should count so heavily against us. Nor did she believe we should be forced to move out of our house. I understand that I would not be eligible for a Basic Opportunity Grant under the Middle Income Student Assistance Act given this situation today. After I was turned down for an EOG, I applied for both a guaranteed student loan and a National Direct Student Loan from my school. I remember quite clearly that I was aware of the difference in interest rates between the two types of loans and that while I preferred the three percent rate, I was out to get whatever I could. I was desperate. I traveled to New Jersey that summer to see my college financial and officer at Drew University. I remember practically begging for a National Direct Student Loan and being turned down again because we bad "too much money." Finally, our bank gave me a $1,000 guaranteed student loan. This however fell far short of the funds I needed. In order to afford school that year I worked two jobs. I es the college receptionist from 3:00 to 5:00 every afternoon and I wacked at a hamburger and chicken fast food restaurant as a waitress from 6:00 to 11:00 every evening during the week. On the weekends, I baby sat. During the next summer, I worked from 7:30 to 5:00 in a pre-school care center and from 6:00 to 11:00 in a dairy queen six days a week. That year I transferred to Douglass College for Women of Rutgers versity, a state school, because my expenses would be cut in half. I financed my two years at Rutgers with earnings from various jobs ed some contributions from the little money my mother had. When I saduated from Rutgers, Tufts University Graduate School of Education offered me a $1,500 scholarship which meant that I had to find a way to By the other $1,500 of the $3,000 tuition as well as living expenses. I applied for both an NDSL from Tufts and a GSL from a local bank. It es hard to find a bank that would even accept my application. Our bank * had awarded me the $1,000 GSL several years earlier had stopped its participation in the program. Other banks would not accept my application unless our family would open a minimum savings account of about $300. Even then, those banks required a three month wait before processing the GSL application. As I look back, it strikes me that my chances of getting a loan depended to a great extent on factors that were not in my control such as whether the bank my mother uses participates in the program, whether it suddenly drops out of the program, or whether I was accepted to college early enough in the year to compete with other students for the limited funds our local banks were allocating for the loan program. Perhaps these are some of the elements of chance in receiving aid that the Subcommittee discussed last week. Because there are so many more students who need GSL's than there is money allocated by banks where I live, there is a real competition for these loans that begins early in the year. For this reason, I could not afford the luxury of first applying for the NDSL from Tufts and then waiting to hear on that loan before applying for the GSL. As a consequence, I was awarded both loans when I intended to borrow only one. It was a temptation to keep both loans which I did becuase it meant that for the first time in five years, I could go to school without working. Once again, looking back, I see now that I was using the loan programs as a base of my support as BOG's are intended to do. How many other students are forced into this situation? I have also wondered how many students are "over awarded" in this way and also why one school, Drew University, would turn me down for |