<p>I received a decent amount of financial aid (grants) from UVA and I was wondering, how is it "activated"? For example, how do I use the money that UVA has given me to purchase textbooks and such? How do I use it for meal plans? And when the tuition fee is collected each semester, how is that reduced from the grants? Should I be doing anything on SIS?</p>
<p>Are the grants you received more than tuition? Otherwise I believe it is just deducted from your tuition and you don’t use it for books or meal plans. But I’m not 100% sure on that…</p>
<p>There is a page on the Financial Aid website that is just about [the</a> disbursement of funds](<a href=“http://www.virginia.edu/financialaid/disbursement.php]the”>http://www.virginia.edu/financialaid/disbursement.php). Funds are credited to your account and you should be able to see that at some point via the SIS (the is a financial section). Other questions really should be directed towards Student Financial Services.</p>
<p>You can usually find key info just by using the search box on the UVa website’s front page.</p>
<p>Thank you, Dean J, for the link. I’ve searched this throughout the website and I have all my questions answered except for one: can any of my financial aid money be used for textbooks and such?</p>
<p>I don’t know the answer to that, but I assume it would mean buying through the bookstore. If you have a need to save money, you should shop online instead, so it may be irrelevant for you! In general, other people who are willing to pay for the convenience in location and time, as well as support our local bookstore (it barely keeps afloat from what I understand – friends have been employees under work study, it is not just some big bad UVA entity hogging money like say parking&transp) then you should buy from the bookstore instad.</p>