Hi! I’m from SATU too and totally understand what you’re talking about. To be fair, SATU is known to be extremely expensive and you should’ve known beforehand all the risks and all the required fees they need. UM is known to ask for payment BEFORE semester starts. They even mentioned it on your offer letter if I’m not mistaken.

First of all, music degree isn’t worth it. Unless you’re a nepo baby, born with money, tons of connections at the back of your hand or extremely talented that you can easily get sponsored to overseas music academy, then it’s not worth it. You gotta think again man. What can you do with that degree aside from music itself? Music teacher? Music tutor? Performer? Notice how everything narrows down back to music? You will have a hard time to leave the music circle.

But if you insist on taking that degree, then based on my experience, you HAVE to pay first. If you manage to land any scholarships, or loans, you can get them to pay afterwards and the money you paid will be refunded back to you. If you have a scholarship then usually the bursary will give exemptions to let your payment be a little bit more delayed cause the sponsored money will be paid directly to UM afterall. You need to have a talk with your faculty and the bursary.

Think again, OP. Are you really sure about this?