<p>Ok long story short, I messed up the last couple semesters really really bad and ended up losing my financial aid. Last semester I realized I was going to fail another class and I called the school to help me decide if I should drop the class or request a pass/fail grade. I was advised to go ahead and drop the class and to go ahead and pay for at least one class out of pocket this summer that will bring my SAP percentage up to 66%. After this I would be eligible for financial aid again. Well now, I am being told that because I dropped that class, I am now excluded from receiving financial aid at this school! I really need some advice and basically my main questions are what can I do and if I can receive financial aid if I go to another school.</p>
<p>Getting financial aid is a privilege. Yes,it starts out as an entitlement, but once you get that money, you have to do certain things inorder to keep it. Every student on aid should be very aware, painfully so, of what s/he needs to do to keep the aid. You have to have both the rules for the aid and the school in mind and know it well. No one, including the school administrators are going to do this for you. So, now you know.</p>
<p>Set up an appt with on of the FA directors and go in there with your transcript and situation in hand and find out what the story is. You might be OUT at that school. If so, find out exactly what needs to be done to at least be eligible again for federal aid. Would taking a class and paying for it out of pocket, if you get the grades make you eligible again, if not at that school, possibly elsewhere.</p>
<p>If you have run afoul of federal guidelines, no, you cannot get any aid anywhere, until you take some courses and pay them out of pocket to a point where your gpa is deemed acceptable. You need to find out what the rules are for that. Then you can transfer elsewhere. If you are not permitted to even take a loose summer class at this school, you need to find one at a school that you can afford that meets certain guidelines in terms of requalifying you for aid, and get the grade you need to bring your average up where it is acceptable. Without full knowledge of your semester at college, your grades, what you have dropped, what kind of aid you have and your school policies, none of us can answer you more specifically.</p>
<p>You “messed up” two semesters and then were flunking a class in another semester. Sounds like this is the time to take a leave of absence from college and take decide what you really want to do with your life and, if college is a part of that, whether you are prepared to buckle down and do the necessary work.</p>
<p>Be aware that there are limited years and amounts of federal aid, and you might want to wait to use anymore of it until you are ready to buckle down with college. A lot of sad souls who now have a direction they want but do to younger days’ foul ups and flunk outs, they are out of luck in terms of getting any money. They have to pay for it all out of pocket and can’t. No loans, no PELL, nothing available to them. So don’t just use it because it’s there. You need some time to figure out what you want to do, how you are going to do it and find a time where that is your focus. You’ve just flushed down 3 terms of Pell eligibility right there.</p>