<p>My son has been awarded financial aid for his freshman year. Can someone please explain how the financial aid is distributed. It appears from the school website that 1st semester tuition, etc. is due before school starts but somewhere else it says financial aid is distributed sometime after school starts. (It also says you may be withdrawn from classes if payment is not made).</p>
<p>For most schools they do give the bill and expect payment before the FA funds are dispersed but they count the expected FA as credits so your bill is any balance remaining. Hope that helps!</p>
<p>Charlottemom, does the school have a payment plan? Our son’s school has a payment plan and allows for equal payments to be made throughout the school year. Our first payment is due in August. For our older child the first payment I recall was either in May or June and we were late in getting onto their payment plan (we did not know about it). All that we needed to do was send in the first 2 payments when we enrolled and we were caught up.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone! I don’t know if they have a payment plan or not. I have not yet received a bill but I will call the financial aid office and check.</p>
<p>When you receive the bill (probably very soon) it will likely come with some explanation of payment choices. Or you can almost certainly find this info on their website. I’ve never seen a college bill without expected FA, including loans, credited against the total…thank goodness! Btw, if you have a rewards type credit card that you don’t carry a balance on, those payments are a great way to build up points…spending them seems like the only way I treat myself these days:)</p>
<p>^^My son’s college shows the expected financial aid as expected but does not credit until received. I generally take the payment plan, make the first payment and by the time the next invoice is received everything is credited and the balance reflects where we are with institutional aid and his Stafford reflected.</p>
<p>That’s interesting…does that include federal/state aid and loans? Is that for a public or private school? Idk why they wouldn’t credit grant aid at least on the first billing cycle…it’s not like the feds are going to stiff them! The only aid my D’s school, and the other schools I’ve seen bills for, won’t credit in advance is state aid for summer classes. But that’s because it takes a full year for the school to actually get that money!</p>
<p>We get a bill with the scholarship (from the university) subtracted, but they do not subtract another scholarship that comes in every semester AFTER the bill is due. The university just cuts us a check for the scholarship amount when it arrives.</p>
<p>I knew that my son’s bill was going out electronically on July 1 and I was looking for it in my inbox and, finally, today I asked my son if he’d gotten any emails from the school. He didn’t know (!?!?!?) and said he would check. Sure enough, it was in his inbox. :-/ He forwarded it to me and it turned out there was a whole process to go through to get me assigned as the “payer.” </p>
<p>See if they sent it to your son via email.</p>
<p>Very good point, Pengo! My kids just automatically forward me anything that looks like it’s FA/bill related but that did take some training and reminding them to check their new school email accounts in the summer before they started.</p>