Dropping classes can significantly affect your financial aid eligibility.  Therefore it is important to contact the financial aid office BEFORE dropping or withdrawing from classes. 

Dropping classes may impact your financial aid in several ways:

• It may result in an adjustment to your award since some financial aid programs are available only to students who are full time (12 or more hours)
• It may result in the loss of future eligibility for some financial aid programs which require you to maintain full time enrollment
• It may result in a low completion rate (hours earned/hours attempted) since there will be no earned hours
• If you are on financial aid probation, it will result in the termination of your eligibility at the end of the term

Withdrawing from Classes

Students who officially or unofficially withdraw from all of their classes in a term may only keep the federal aid earned up to the point of withdrawal. Federal Title IV funds that were disbursed in excess of the earned amount must be returned. The result may be money owed to the university, the federal government or both.  Money owed to MUW must be fully paid before future registration.  Money owed to the federal government can result in future aid ineligibility until it is paid.

Students who completely withdraw from classes (through successive dropping of courses until they are no longer registered or in a complete withdrawal from all courses at once) are subject to the Return of Title IV Refund Calculation (a Federal formula). 

Determination of Federal Aid Earned

Earned aid is determined based on the number of calendar days the student attended classes divided by the total number of calendar days in the term. The result is a percentage of federal aid funds that the student is entitled to keep. For example, a student who attends 20% of the term has earned 20% of the total aid value that was disbursed to their bill.

Return of Unearned Federal Aid (Title IV)

The total federal aid disbursed at the point of withdrawal less the earned amount is the unearned aid that must be returned to the federal government. The university will allocate the return of unearned aid in the following order:

• Federal Unsubsidized Loan
• Federal Subsidized Loan
• Federal Perkins Loan
• Federal Parent or Graduate PLUS Loan
• Federal Pell Grant
• Federal SEOG
• TEACH Grant

Effect of Receiving All “F” Grades in a Term

Students who receive all “F” grades, or a combination of F, W, WP, and/or WF grades, in their classes for a given term are subject to the Return of Title IV Refund Calculation if theses grades were received as a result of the student not completing the term.    If the grades were earned, meaning the student completed the entire term and simply earned “F” grades, the Return of Title IV Refund Calculation will not be required.