Year-Round Aid Distribution

Student Financial Aid works with you to align your aid with your enrollment plans.

Loans are most often affected by year-round attendance.

Direct Loans, like other aid, are often awarded for fall and spring. Since this is the academic year that most students follow and plan to attend, funding is split evenly between fall and spring. Students attending only fall and spring will not see a change in their loan distribution.

In cases where students plan to be enrolled at least half-time in fall, spring, and summer semesters, their Direct Loans can be evenly divided over all 3 terms (rather than just fall and spring semesters). It will mean slightly smaller loan funds each term, but it will also mean that the student benefits from loan assistance throughout the enrollment timeframe.

Co-op students will most routinely be affected by year-round enrollment.

Students can submit their enrollment plans (particularly to differentiate co-op and in-class terms) when they are attending year-round. These reported plans are used to give students an appropriate aid eligibility budget as well as determine if the Direct Loans are redistributed over all three terms.

Students planning on attending all 3 terms (even with different costs due to classes v. co-op or a smaller courseload in summer) have costs for each term. Having the Direct Loans distributed over all 3 terms helps you to anticipate meeting more of your costs throughout the year.

It is important that students accurately report their enrollment plans. Doing so will maximize your aid eligibility over the course of the year and for future years.

Any changes in your enrollment plans should be reported to Student Financial Aid.

NOTE: Students who change plans and are no longer planning to attend summer must inform Student Financial Aid at least 2 weeks prior to spring exam week in order to receive any of the planned summer loan allotment.

Year-round attendance most dramatically affects Direct Loans. At the same time, other aid sources can be more properly maximized through accurate reporting of year-round attendance.

• Scholarships: Scholarships are generally limited to full-time, in-class terms. Students attending year-round and eligible for renewable scholarships can use an additional term of funding toward their four-year equivalency.
  
  
• Grants: The Federal Pell Grant will post for fall-spring. Pell-eligible students are first evaluated for summer eligibility if they did not receive their annual allotment in fall-spring (either through non-attendance or attending part-time). Second Pell can be granted if the student was full-time already for the year. Pell recipients are limited to 6 years overall. State grant programs such as OCOG work similarly with restrictions on summer with the summer being part of the upcoming year rather than the past year by state rules. Other grant programs including Federal SEOG will only carry over to summer if you are on co-op in fall or spring.
  
  
• Work-Study: Students are eligible to continue work-study employment during the summer (even if enrolled less than half-time as long as they will be enrolled the following fall). A specific summer work-study application available after February 1 is required.
  
  
• Loans: As noted, Federal Direct Subsidized, Unsubsidized and PLUS Loans are processed over the terms of enrollment (including summer when a student is in class or on co-op). Subsidized and Unsubsidized Loan annual loan amounts are divided into equal thirds when a student is enrolled over summer as well as fall and spring. Some students, based on mid-year class progression to sophomore or junior status, could seek a loan increase at the time of the advanced grade level. Alternative educational loans are processed based on the request of the student and encouraged over all terms of enrollment for any given academic year.
  

If you have questions about specific aid due to year-round attendance, please seek out staff at Enrollment Services on the Clifton campus or on your branch campus.