<p>I was at college orientation and it seems that there making it really confusing being fully notified of what and how your financial aid works in the summer? I wrote on my Summer Financial Aid Form 6 hours for Summer 1 and 6 hours for Summer 2 which for the full semester amounts to 12 hours which is considered full time if im not mistaken? The financial aid lady said sometimes things are weird in the summer time, will I receive my full award amount after tuition and fee's as scheduled or will it be disbursed over the course of the summer? has anyone ever experienced this confusion before.. thanks</p>
<p>Hard to say because yes it does get wierd in the summer. Mostly, the financial aid award letter you get in the spring is a full year’s worth of aid. It gets split according to the number of billing units in the standard academic year, Aug/Sep - May/June. Summer is considered “extra.” You can use any aid fed/state awarded but that you didn’t tap into during the regular academic year (mostly, that’ll be loans) for your summer school. </p>
<p>Institutional money is anybody’s guess. My employer does not offer summer aid; instead they offer courses at reduced tuition. Others may offer summer aid.</p>
<p>Every school handles summer differently, so you have to contact the school to find out exactly how it works for them. Where I worked, there were two short summer sessions and one long summer session. Federal regulations required us to use one long aid period for purposes of withdrawal calculations. It can get messy if you drop a class you were enrolled in … let’s say you enrolled in full time between summer 1 and summer 2. You got a Pell grant disbursement based on 12 credits, which would be 50% of the annual award (assuming you did not use it during fall/winter). Now let’s say you later decide to drop a summer 2 class and are down to 8 credits. You are now only eligible for 25% of your annual award … and you will have to repay the Pell you already received. Other schools will set separate disbursement dates & won’t disburse the portion of aid attributed to summer 2 until that term starts. Yet other schools include summer in the 2012-13 award year, and your summer aid will reduce the aid available to you during the regular school year.</p>
<p>It’s confusing, and that is why you have to talk to the school to find out for sure.</p>