Withdrawing from MVCC
Withdrawing from the College in the middle of the semester can become costly. Please review our Business Office's refund policy.
What happens to my financial aid when I withdraw?
When you receive financial aid, the basis of the aid is that it would be for completion of an entire semester of school. When you withdraw during the semester, the Financial Aid Office has to perform a Return to Title IV Funds calculation. The school will complete this calculation within 45 days of when the school has been notified that you have withdrawn or stopped attending. This calculation is based on the percentage of the semester you completed. Generally, we will be required to return a portion of the aid that was paid on your behalf to the College. This might result in you owing a balance to the College. If you complete beyond 60% of the semester, the College does not need to return any funds.
The order in which funds are returned is as follows: The Unsubsidized Direct Stafford Loan, Subsidized Direct Stafford Loan, Perkins Loan, Direct Parent Plus Loan, Pell Grant, Academic Competitiveness Grant, National SMART Grant, FSEOG, TEACH Grant, and Iraq Afghanistan Service Grant.
If you did not receive all of the funds you earned, you may be due a post-withdrawal disbursement. If your post-withdrawal disbursement includes loan funds, your school must get your permission before it can disburse them. You may choose to decline some or all of the loan funds so that you don’t incur additional debt. Your school may automatically use all or a portion of your post-withdrawal disbursement of grant funds for tuition, fees, and room and board charges (as contracted with the school). The school needs your permission to use the post-withdrawal grant disbursement for all other school charges. If you do not give your permission (some schools ask for this when you enroll), you will be offered the funds. However, it may be in your best interest to allow the school to keep the funds to reduce your debt at the school.
There are some Title IV funds that you were scheduled to receive that cannot be disbursed to you once you withdraw because of other eligibility requirements. For example, if you are a first-time, first-year undergraduate student and you have not completed the first 30 days of your program before you withdraw, you will not receive any Direct Loan funds that you would have received had you remained enrolled past the 30th day.
If you receive (or your school or parent receive on your behalf) excess Title IV program funds that must be returned, your school must return a portion of the excess equal to the lesser of:
- your institutional charges multiplied by the unearned percentage of your funds, or
- the entire amount of excess funds.
The school must return this amount even if it didn’t keep this amount of your Title IV program funds.
If your school is not required to return all of the excess funds, you must return the remaining amount. For any loan funds that you must return, you (or your parent for a Direct PLUS Loan) repay in accordance with the terms of the promissory note. That is, you make scheduled payments to the holder of the loan over a period of time.
Any amount of unearned grant funds that you must return is called an overpayment. The maximum amount of a grant overpayment that you must repay is half of the grant funds you received or were scheduled to receive. You do not have to repay a grant overpayment if the original amount of the overpayment is $50 or less. You must make arrangements with your school or the Department of Education to return the unearned grant funds.
The requirements for Title IV program funds when you withdraw are separate from any refund policy that your school may have. Therefore, you may still owe funds to the school to cover unpaid institutional charges. Your school may also charge you for any Title IV program funds that the school was required to return. If you don’t already know your school’s refund policy, you should ask your school for a copy. Your school can also provide you with the requirements and procedures for officially withdrawing from school.
Source: Consumer Information about the return of Federal funds as provided by the Federal Student Aid Handbook Volume 5.
If you have questions about your Title IV program funds, you can call the Federal Student Aid Information Center at 1-800-433-3243. TTY users may call 1-800-730-8913. Information is also available at studentaid.gov.
If you decide to withdraw, you need to complete a Withdrawal Form, which will let us know what date you are withdrawing. If you stop attending classes and do not complete a withdrawal form, we will use your last date of academic activity as your withdrawal date. Your last date of academic activity will be provided by the professors teaching your courses. If there is beyond a two-week difference between your last academic activity and the date you provide your withdrawal form, we will use your last date of academic activity for the Return to Title IV Funds calculation.
Future semesters’ impact:
The courses the student attempted and withdrew from will be counted as credits attempted. This will negatively impact your future semesters based on the Student Academic Progress that needs to be evaluated each semester for all students receiving Financial Aid. Please see our Standards of Academic Progress chart to familiarize yourself with the requirements to stay in good academic progress for Federal Financial Aid.
When you withdraw from any course, that course is always considered as an attempted credit. This will count toward your attempted credits but will not count toward an earned credit. Following the Standard of Academic Progress guidelines you must stay in line with attempted credits verses earned credits.
New York State impact:
As the Federal Financial Aid has standards that a student must maintain, the State grant (NYS TAP) has standards as well. You will find these standards on our Standards of Academic Progress chart.