Award Package Notification and Appeals

Students receive notice of their financial aid amounts via a financial aid offer. Students are also informed of their right to make changes and the process for requesting changes in the financial aid offer.

A student may request a change to the award by the later of the first day of the payment period or 14 days after the student is notified of the award. The student may make changes to the offered amounts by contacting the Student and Financial Services Team.

Students who wish to appeal an awarded amount may do so by contacting the Student and Financial Services Team. The student’s request must meet the requirements for a Professional Judgment, and the student must follow the Professional Judgment process.

The University does not disburse the loan until the borrower is notified of the proposed loan package and the time given to respond, 14 days, has elapsed. The borrower only needs to take action if they want to decline the loan or make adjustments to the amount of the loan.

Award Revisions

Once a financial aid offer  has been issued to a student, an appeal or other circumstance may require a change to the original notification. The Student and Financial Services Team reviews a student’s circumstances and, if appropriate, makes an adjustment to the award, and sends a revised financial aid offer as soon as possible. The revised award offer  supersedes the original award notice, which is then no longer valid.

The Student and Financial Services Team routinely considers a revision in a student’s aid package when any of the following occurs:

• There is conflicting information in the file
• There are changes resulting from verification
• An administrative error occurred
• There is a change to the student course schedule
• Additional funding has been identified

Overawards

An overaward occurs when the student’s disbursed financial aid (federal, institutional, and outside aid) and other resources exceed the cost of attendance for the award period. There are several possible reasons why overawards occur:

• The student has additional resources greater than those used to calculate the award
• The Financial Aid Office has inadvertently made an error

In addition, the student may have intentionally deceived or misrepresented information in order to obtain funds. If a determination is made that an overaward has occurred because of fraud, the Financial Aid Office will report the suspected fraud to the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education. Before reducing an aid package because of an overaward, the Financial Aid Office attempts to eliminate the overaward by:

• Increasing the student’s budget using allowable expenses, or
• Adjusting the EFC or
• Adjusting undisbursed funds for the current payment period (all undisbursed financial aid funds are adjusted in the case of an overaward)

If eliminating the over award is not possible, the Financial Aid Office reduces aid in the next payment period and requests that the student be billed for any remaining amount due.