Withdrawals and Refunds

Withdrawal Notification, Tuition Refunds & Return to Title IV

Students who wish to withdraw from CCMS must notify the Office of the Registrar. Students who “officially withdraw” or leave the CCMS program are tracked by faculty and the Academic Chair and reported to the Registrar with date of last academic activity. The Registrar will immediately notify the Financial Aid Administrator (FAA) of any Official Withdrawals. The date of last academic activity will be used by the FAA to calculate percentage of funds earned in the Return to Title IV (R2T4) process.

Unofficial Withdrawal Notification

Students who “unofficially withdraw” or leave the CCMS program without official notification are tracked by faculty and the Academic Chair and reported to the Registrar with date of last academic activity.

The Registrar will immediately notify the Financial Aid Administrator of any Unofficial Withdrawals. The date of last academic activity will be used by the FAA to calculate percentage of funds earned in the Return to Title IV (R2T4) process.

Return to Title IV

In general, Federal regulations assume that you “earn” your Federal financial aid awards directly proportional to the number of days of the term that you attend until you withdraw. If you completely withdraw from school during a term, the school must calculate according to a specific formula the portion of the total scheduled financial assistance you have earned and are therefore entitled to receive up to the time you withdraw. If you or CCMS receives more assistance than you earn, the unearned excess funds must be returned to the Department of Education. On the other hand, if you or CCMS receives less assistance than the amount you have earned, you may be able to receive those additional funds.

The portion of your Federal student aid you are entitled to receive is calculated on a percentage basis by comparing the total number of days in the semester to the number of days you completed before you withdrew. For example, if you complete 30% of the semester, you earn 30% of the assistance you were originally scheduled to receive. This means that 70% of your scheduled awards remain unearned and must be returned to the Department of Education.

Once you have completed more than 60% of the semester, you have earned all (100%) of your assistance. If you withdraw from CCMS before completing 60% of the semester, you may have to repay any unearned financial aid funds that were already disbursed to you. If you received excess funds based on this calculation, CCMS must return a portion of the excess equal to the lesser of:

• The student’s institutional charges multiplied by the unearned percentage of funds, or
• The entire amount of the excess funds

If CCMS is not required to return all the excess funds, you must return the remaining amount. The order that CCMS and you must return these funds is as follows:

• Unsubsidized Federal Stafford Loan
• Subsidized Federal Stafford Loan
• Federal Perkins Loan
• Federal PLUS Loan
• Federal Pell Grant
• Federal SEOG Grant
• Other Title IV Programs

If you are required to repay loan funds, this is done in accordance with the terms of your loan promissory note. If you must repay any grant funds, the law states that you are not required to repay 50% of the grant assistance that you were calculated to repay. Any grant amount that a student must repay is considered a grant overpayment and therefore must be repaid to CCMS within 45 days.

Credit Balance Policy

A Federal Student Aid (FSA) credit balance occurs whenever CCMS applies the student’s FSA awarded funds to the student’s account and the total amount of those FSA funds exceeds the student’s balance due to the College. If this happens, CCMS must pay the credit balance directly to the student or parent as soon as possible but no later than 14 days after:

• The date the balance occurred on the student’s account, if the balance occurred after the first day of class of a payment period, or
• The first day of classes of the payment period if the credit balance occurred on or before the first day of class of that payment period.

CCMS may not require you to take any actions to obtain your credit balance. It is the sole responsibility of CCMS to pay, or make available, any FSA credit balance within the 14-day regulatory time frames.

Notwithstanding any authorization obtained by the school, CCMS must provide the student with any remaining FSA credit balance resulting from FSA loan funds by the end of the loan period and any other FSA program credit balances by the end of the last payment period in the award year for which the funds were awarded.