So I went to look at the cost of my second semester and noticed that the balance was the same as the first semester. My parents offered to pay the first semester and I was with them when they did it, they seemed to follow all the instructions properly and it went through. Today I went to look at their bank statements and I can see that it was indeed sent and the recipient was 'McMaster University'.

Could it have been sent to the wrong department or something? I was supposed to have paid 60% the first semester and 40% the second, so I see no reason why the balance should be around the same number.

Did you get that balance from payment agreement or account statement? If its from the account statement, then you can try emailing the finance department? or administrators who are in-charge of financial or tuition related stuff.

When you transferred the payment, did you include your full name and student ID #? Lack of information may cause delays because the administrations that deals with this kind of stuff does not know who the money is from.

Another possible reason of same balance might be that you have add/drop courses. This is highly to happen if you are a part-time student bcuz the fees are charged according to the number of course(s) you are taking. *I might be wrong*

There's also interest on whatever wasn't paid in September.

Look at the full invoice to see when payments were made and an itemized list of everything you owe. You should be able to find the discrepancy that way, and if not (or if you feel the discrepancy is an error) contact Student Accounts and Cashiers.

I beleive they wait till drop/add date to accommodate for any course changes/addition to be included in the fee. Thats what they did during september.

The worst possible is if you sent money to a different student number by mistake and will lose the money, or even worse you might have funded a drug lord's account and will go to prison for 40-50 years. Otherwise, you are good