SAP Appeal Letter

Paying for College
1

Hi, I’ve received a letter stating I’m losing my financial aid until I can bring my GPA back up. I come from a low income family and I don’t have that kind of money so I’ve decided to write an appeal. Please let me know if this is good and if there’s anything I should or could take away or add. Thank you.

Dear Appeal Committee,
My name is XXX, and I will be a sophomore at XXX in the Fall of 2019. I’m writing this letter requesting the reinstatement of my financial aid. My Spring semester was tough for me mainly due to the courses I was taking. The workload was heavy and I believed that I could’ve managed it. Instead of dropping courses that I was struggling in I stayed in them because I believed that I could’ve improved in them. Apart from that I didn’t seek help for those courses I was struggling in. My time management was really bad and I was hanging out with the wrong group of people. Apart from that I had started working an on-campus job that made me sleepy throughout the day because I had to work early.

By the second half of the Spring semester is when I learned how to manage my time better and I was no longer hanging with people who were affecting me negatively. I began taking advantage of the Brown Building more than I was in the beginning of the semester. I still had my job because I need to support myself at school financially which was still making me sleepy.

For the Fall semester I have made my schedule to where my classes are only from 2:30pm-5:00pm. This will allow me to spend more time focusing on each of my classes. I will be going to the XXX at least 3 times a week so I can get extra help on my work. I will take advantage of each professor’s office hours if I’m struggling in a class or any questions or concerns I have with the course. In addition, I will seek help from a tutor if I have any issues or can’t figure things out on my own. I know that taking these necessary steps will put me right back into compliance by the end of the semester. It is an honor to attend XXX and I sincerely hope you can grant this appeal.

2

Do you understand that dropping courses also affects your satisfactory academic progress. It is not just GPA.

A few things.

  1. Leave out abbreviations. Don’t use “could’ve”. Write it out...could have.
  2. You need to proofread your grammar. It’s not accurate in a number of places.
  3. I don’t really see anything stating what you have already done to deal with your low grades, only what you plan to do.
  4. How do you know that classes starting at 2 or so will even always be available to you. They might not be. Also, how do you know this will improve your class performance. You don’t...and the folks reviewing this won’t know either.
  5. How far off the GPA requirement are you? What was your first term GPA also?
3

There’s nothing I can do at this point to improve my GPA right now… the semester starts in the Fall. And I’m already registered for classes so they will be available to me. I stated that having classes from 2:30-5 allows me to have more time to focus on each course.
My gpa my first term was 3.0 and my second term it was 1.9

4

My point is…there is no way you know that having classes starting in the afternoon will really help you. You might end up sleeping until 1 p.m.

What will you do in this “Brown Building”?

I’m sorry, but I think your letter is not specific…and it somewhat rambles. These folks want to see three things.

  1. What your issue is...briefly stated.
  2. What you already have done to address it.
  3. What you successful things you have already done that you plan to continue.