Texas A&M University- Corpus Christi

Getting Proactive About Over Awards

 An over-award exists when a student’s aid package exceeds his or her need. While your school must always take care not to over-award a student when packaging his or her aid, circumstances may change after you have packaged the student’s aid that result in an over-award.

 A student may receive a scholarship or grant from an outside organization. When an over- award situation arises, you may be required to adjust the Federal Student Aid (FSA) in the student’s package in order to eliminate the over-award.

 Over-awards only become overpayments if a school cannot correct them before funds are disbursed to a student. That is, an overpayment exists when some or all of the funds that make up an over-award have been disbursed to the student. An over-award exists whenever:  a student’s aid package exceeds his or her need (including when the student’s Expected Family Contribution (EFC) is revised upward after initial packaging);  a student’s award exceeds his or her cost of attendance (COA); and  In general, unless a school is liable, a student is liable for any overpayment made to him or her.

 Our office would begin to run over award jobs at least two weeks prior to disbursement  Once aid was disbursed into a student’s tuition account we would run over award jobs 2 or 3 times per week to catch any potential over award prior to refunds being released  Why were not successful?

 A student’s resources were only posted for the fall  Never had a true picture of the total number of over awarded students  Students asked why adjustments were made entirely in the spring (I did not have a good answer)  Approached our Business Office and asked if resources could be posted for the entire year and was told that it would mess up tables

 Like these power point slides the idea came like rays from heaven  What if the financial aid office, with the help of our programmer, created an estimated resource on our private scholarship screen for every student receiving a resource in the fall term  The thought was I would rather give the aid back if they did not receive the resource in the spring

 Because we are able to estimate the resource for the spring we can adjust a student’s financial aid for the academic year  Our goal is loans first, but we make sure that a student is not over need or over the Cost of Attendance  Students are more pleased getting their aid returned if they are eligible

 We post all private scholarships manually so students should not be over awarded  In the last three years less than 5 students have returned money due to an over award caused by resources

% of Total Charges sent to Collections  FY %  FY %  FY %  Due to the hard work of our Accounts Receivables Dept. and getting proactive about over awards, we have seen a steady decline in the % of total amount billed being sent to collections

Questions ?