If you drop or withdraw from courses, there may be consequences to your financial aid that will vary depending on when in the semester you make changes to your enrollment and what type of financial aid you have. We highly recommend consulting the financial aid office if you plan to make changes to your enrollment.
Dropping Courses
A course is considered “dropped” if you unenroll yourself from the course before the “last day to drop with a refund” for that course. When you drop a course, it no longer appears on your transcript and will not be assigned a grade.
Some types of financial aid will be adjusted if you enroll part-time. Your enrollment will be locked on the “census date,” which is the last day to drop with a refund for the full term session (16 weeks for fall and spring or 10 weeks for summer). Your financial aid will be disbursed based on your enrollment as of that date.
If you drop a later-starting course after the census date, your financial aid may need to be adjusted. In some cases, this will result in you owing a balance to the college. If you fail to begin attendance/participation in a course, you will be reporting as “never attended,” and your course will be dropped. This may also result in a recalculation of your financial aid.
Withdrawing from Courses
A course is considered “withdrawn” if you unenroll yourself from the course after the “last day to drop with a refund.” If you withdraw from a course before the “last day to withdraw with a ‘W’,” the course will remain on your transcript with a grade of “W.”
When you withdraw from one or more course, but NOT all of your courses, there may or may not be any impact on your financial aid. If your financial aid has all disbursed, in most cases, your financial aid will remain intact for the semester based on your original enrollment status. If you have a single-semester loan and only the first half has disbursed and you withdraw to fewer than 6 credits, the second half will be cancelled.
When you withdraw from all of your courses, we are required to recalculate your financial aid eligibility based on the percentage of the semester you completed. In most cases, we will have to return a portion of your financial aid to the Department of Education. This usually results in the student owing a balance to the college.
When you stop attending your courses, you are considered “unofficially withdrawn.” If you unofficially withdraw from a full semester, you are subject to the same aid recalculation as students who officially withdraw from a semester.
Withdrawals can have an impact on future aid eligibility. Students are required to complete at least 67% of their courses with a passing grade to continue receiving financial aid. For more information, please see our SAP (Satisfactory Academic Progress) Policy.