 Good evening and welcome to our presentation this evening navigating financial matters. My name is Terry Crowley and I am the Assistant Director in Student Financial Services and we have put together this presentation tonight to help you with some top questions for billing and financial aid. We hope this will be helpful information to you. Our team, we have this evening Jan Hines and Matthew Disorger who will be responding to some questions with me. We will be opening up the question and answer feature towards the end of the presentation. We hope to address as many questions as we can for everyone's benefit but I hope you understand that we cannot answer specific questions about personal circumstances this evening. We have additional information at our web page regarding orientation and some videos. We also have introductory video for students on their checklist through the admissions portal and we are available from 10 to 4.30 every weekday. The first question that we've prepared is where is the bill and when is it due? So fall bills are available online for students and proxy users. The due date is Friday August 19th by 4.30 Eastern Daylight Savings Time. If you're planning ahead the spring bills will be delivered mid December and they'll be due January 11th by 4.30 Eastern Standard Time. How do I avoid a late payment fee and a registration hold? So there's a couple of options make a payment for the balance due by the due date. Online payments are the quickest and immediately post to the account a student and proxy can log in and post a payment and avoid a mail delay. There is an option to enroll in our payment plan that for the balance that would be needed to be completed by August 19th again by the due time. There would be a down payment paid. There's other sources of payment please notify us. You can email us at sfs at uvm.edu with your payment information. Don't assume that we know where the funds are coming from because I'm sure you're using a multiple of sources. Let us know about your plans for payment. As a proxy user, where do I log in to view the bill? There is a proxy login. You can access that through our web page. The students would log in through their student portal, MyUVM. Just a tip if you're sharing a home computer, please clear the browser cache before logging a new login to not compromise any emails or passwords, excuse me. A popular question is what is the comprehensive fee? That is a fee that is charged each semester for two full time students. The fee is $1305 per semester. It's paid by all students to support the services and strength in the university community that supports student success. I'm a proxy, but I didn't get a billing email and can't log in. So this happens. There's a two step for proxy users. So the student will put in your email, but they also need to identify you as a proxy and finish the authorization. I'm showing a page here that is familiar or that you can find on our web page. And that will authorize them. They will authorize you to view your financial aid, billing, and account access. How can I make a payment online? Easily, students and proxies can log in and they will go to View Account and Billing Activity and make payments. If there is a person that is making a guest payment, guest payers can log in with a link, but they will need the student's name and student ID number generally begins with a 9-5. Two types of payment online. An electronic check I recommend that comes from a checking your savings account. There's no additional fee with an electronic check. Please be aware if you pay by a debit or a credit card, there is a 2.85% service charge. So try to avoid any additional charges. Is it too late to start a payment plan for the fall? No. There is still the ability to enroll in a payment plan. We can have one payment plan per student. Either the student or the proxy can log in for that plan. There is a fee of $60, an enrollment fee. There's no interest on the payments if paid by electronic check. There's a fee if you pay by electronic check. To enroll, you would click on the monthly payment plan link. And there is a five-month payment plan that runs from July through November for the fall. After July 21st, though, it would be reduced to a four-month plan. The spring plan is available beginning October 1st, plan ahead. And that would be in December 1 through April 1. Why have we been charged for health insurance? That's a very popular question. There is an annual decision form for a student to either enroll in the health insurance or wave it because they have other coverage. That deadline was July 1st, so if a student did not have the chance to respond to that request, they would have a registration hold and be billed for that first half of the annual premium. But don't worry, a student can still complete the insurance decision and waiver form and have the charge removed with proof of insurance. Please note the final waiver deadline is September 15th, so don't delay and remove that hold and remove that fee from your bill if that's your choice. Why might the balance change from the initial bill? This is a popular question as well. So initially, we will bill for a traditional double room rate for a student, but once their final housing assignment is completed and known, the charges will be adjusted to reflect that actual room they're living in. So that's a change. Also, students register for courses and there might be course fees or lab fees specific to that course. And students add and drop courses, so that could have been picked up since our last billing. Can I get an updated bill to show changes to the account? Not really. We provide online a PDF of the billing statement, but that's at that date in time. It's a static statement and does not update in real time. So we ask that you look at the view the current billing and current account and billing activity. It's a tongue twister to reflect the real time account and see the real charges. Those will be captured on the next billing statement. So if you needed to put those two together, you could print out the two statements for your records. And now I would like to turn it over to my colleague, Jan Henneth. Thank you. Hello everybody and welcome. Thank you again for joining us. My name is Jan. I'm one of the counselors at Student Financial Services and I'll be answering some of our frequently asked questions revolving mainly around scholarships and loans. So here we go. You may have noticed on your statement that some of your aid is listed as pending. We get a lot of questions asking what that means. Most of the pending aid that you will see will be your federal aid. That can be your direct student loans, your parent plus loans. That is because federal money does not pay out until 10 days before classes start. So for the fall, that will pay out on August 19th. Some other things that you might see there if you have set up a payment plan, you may see pending payment plans on that. If you have received an outside scholarship and we know you have the scholarship the monies haven't paid yet, that might be listed there as well. The last thing to keep in mind is you may have some outstanding requirements to satisfy. So please keep checking your email, check your UVM email, and look at your student portal. You can view your requirements right on there. So you want to keep checking that to make sure that you have satisfied everything. Okay, next we are going to touch a little bit on federal work study. Why isn't my federal work study award on my bill? I see it on my award screen, but not on my bill. Federal work study gets paid directly to our student. You're going to obtain a campus job. You will be getting your work study payment in the form of a paycheck that's done through direct deposit. The work study is there to help you with miscellaneous expenses. Students may have some books and things that they want to get, maybe just some personal supplies that they need to have. We cannot guarantee that you will have these funds paid out to you by the time your classes start. So be prepared to get your fall books ahead of time. Maybe this is a good way to save for spring charges for books. All right, now subsidized and unsubsidized direct student loans. These are both loans by the federal government. They are very, very similar. The main difference between these loans is that a subsidized loan is a need-based loan, and there is no interest that accrues until the student goes into their repayment period. An unsubsidized loan, that interest accrues right when the loan disperses. The repayment period starts six months after graduation or when the student drops below half-time or withdraws. And then of course, how do I borrow my federal loans? So what you want to do, and I'm going to stress, this is a student action item. These loans are in the student's name. They are fully responsible. So students, you would go into your portal, accept or decline your student loans. Then you're going to need to do your entrance counseling. This is done right at studentaid.gov, which is where you filled out your FAFSA. This helps you learn your rights and responsibilities as a borrower and teaches you some possibly new loan terminology. You're also going to create your master's promissory note at the same site, studentaid.gov. And this is letting the government know that yes, you understand it's a loan and you'll be responsible for paying that fact. Why is my direct loan on the bill less than my award amount? Now, direct loans, federal loans do have an origination fee. That comes off the top. So a federal direct subsidizer unsubsidized loan has an origination fee of 1.057%. So what does that really mean? If you have a loan, a federal direct loan of $1,000, UVM is going to receive $990 from the federal government. Parent plus loans are a little bit different. Their origination fee is 4.228%. Using the same scenario, if you borrow $1,000 on a parent plus loan, UVM will receive $958. So please make sure you're keeping those origination fees in mind. Now, we know a lot of you have just gone through your senior awards night and we want to congratulate you. If you've received any community scholarships, you might be wondering why you don't see them on your bill. We might not know about them. If you haven't told us, we have no way of knowing. So please keep in touch with us. Notify us that you have received an award. Send us an email. If you have an award lender, that would be great. Send that along to us as well, and we can note it into your account. When that scholarship check comes in, most places will send it directly to UVM. The information is right on the screen there. Make sure that they note your name and ID number. If you've been given a check that has been written out to you, you can endorse that, sign it over to UVM, and would be happy to apply that right to your account. Now, some people wonder how you can use your financial aid and loans to pay for books. Refunds are issued when your aid and loan exceed your charges. This can happen if you borrow up to your cost of attendance. That's made up of billable charges plus non-billable charges. The billable charges are the ones that you will see on your bill. Refunds can help offer offset expenses like books and supplies, but they may not be issued before the start of classes. We want to make sure that you set up your direct deposit so if there is any refund due, it'll go directly into your account. Most refunds go directly to the student unless it's a parent plus loan, and I think we'll talk about that in a little while. Okay, now for those parents out there, parent plus loan. This is a loan in your name. You are going to apply directly through studentaid.gov. Again, that's the place that you did the FAFSA, and you can borrow up to the cost of attendance minus the aid that you receive. Keep in mind that about that origination fee to make any adjustments that you might need. Now, when you're on that site, you can ask for the maximum amount, or you can choose a specific amount. For example, if you want to only borrow $5,000, you can certainly do that. If you need any help, sorry, if you need any help determining what you might need to pay on that loan or ask for in that loan, our bill estimator tool on our website at the end has a parent plus loan calculator. The terms of the parent plus loan. The parent plus loan repayment begins while the student is enrolled. You can ask for a deferment on that repayment. Just to go over the rates again, the interest rate for the parent plus loan for the current year is 7.54%, and there is a 4.228 origination fee. Keep in mind that this loan does start accruing interest when it disperses. And here's the part I said we would get to. How can excess plus loans be used to assist my student in buying books or miscellaneous supplies? When you apply for the loan, you want to make sure to check the box to return funds to my student if that is what you would like to happen. Our default is if you borrowed a loan and there's an overage, we're going to give that money back to the borrower, which would be the parent. If you would like that to be different, make sure that you check that box when you are applying for your loan. Now that was a lot about federal loans, but I also want to talk a little bit about private education loans. These are loans that you seek out and apply to through a private lender. They could be banks, credit unions, various lending agencies, and you're going to want to shop around. You're going to want to look for things like your interest payment, origination fees, repayment schedules. Some of these loans will be available for parents to take out. Most of them are in the student's name with a credit worthy co-signer. We do have a list on our website through our loan comparison tool called Elm Select. These are loans that students at UVM have utilized in the past, and it's a great jumping off point to just start to research some loan options. You would then choose one, apply directly through that lender, and that lender would connect to UVM, and that is how we would get your private education loan to pay to your bill. Now some of you have some fabulous 529 saving plans. So the first thing I would like to remind you is just like receiving an outside scholarship, please keep in touch with us. We would love to know if you plan on utilizing those funds, send us an email to the financial institution that will be coming from and the dollar amount. The 529 address is different. Keep in mind it's on our screen here. This goes directly to a PO box. That's our lock box address. Now make sure that the financial institution does include the student's name and ID number so we can get that accurately and quickly to your student's account. One thing I will point out, do not send that overnight. It is a PO and lock box, and it does not take overnight deliveries. Now for students, I have federal work study. How do I get a job? First thing you're going to do, don't forget, if you would like your work study job, accept it on your portal. Second thing is you are going to go to the student employment site on UVM's website. There will be a job board there that will have jobs posted and you are going to do just like any other job. You're going to find a job that you might like. You're going to apply for it, interview, and then get your job on campus. Now you want to make sure that you get that job on campus. It has to all be completed by October 1st at 4.30. So keep that date in mind. Keep in mind also that that does get paid directly to you on a paycheck. It will not be deducted from your bill. Now for those of you out there who do not have work study, don't you worry, we have other campus jobs available too. You're going to go to the same site and go through the same steps of applying for a job. Now that has wrapped it up for me on loans and scholarships. Thanks again for joining us and I am going to pass it over to my colleague Matt Disorger. Hi everybody. Good evening. Matt Disorger here. Pleased to be with you. The first thing I want to mention before I answer just a few other questions is that we have opened the Q&A in the chat functionality, so do feel free to post questions and we'll begin responding to those shortly. We have kind of a couple other sort of top questions that I'm going to try to address, but feel free to begin putting those questions in that you may have and we'll do our best to answer as many of those as we can once we sort of wrap up with what we had prepared by way of slides this evening. So we did want to speak a little bit to questions that we are getting at this point in time regarding families whose financial circumstances have changed since the FAFSA was filed. So the FAFSA of course is capturing income information from 2020 and we do recognize that many families have had changes in circumstances since that point in time. Not all changes in family finances, not all changes in circumstance will result in a change to a student's financial aid award, but we don't know to explore that with you unless you bring it to our attention. So if you've had a change in family circumstances, the first thing you want to do is draw our attention to that. You can do that by sending an email to our office and just outline what has changed since the FAFSA was filed, be that a change in employment circumstances, a change in income, and it's helpful to give some detail if you have it of a timeline of when did things change, or if you have some information about family income was this in 2020 and here's what it is now. That level of detail will help us determine if this is a circumstance that would warrant a financial aid appeal. So we will review that. We will then engage in communication with you and let you know if we need any additional information or have additional questions. So that's the best way to get that process started. We would ask that in emailing us not to send a bunch of documentation right at the outset, we want to take a look first at what specific questions we might have. So we'll let you know the documentation we might need. And of course, we always, again, don't want folks sending personal identifying information or social security number or tax documents by email. If those are necessary, we'll have you upload those through our secure portal online, which I think is where the next kind of slide and question go to, which is again, if we do need information documentation, tax returns, things of that nature, either in connection with a financial aid appeal or in connection with an application for financial aid, students do have access to our FAFSA verification portal where those items can be securely uploaded, items can be completed online. And again, if you are pursuing a financial aid appeal, we'll be letting you know the specific items we may be looking for there. As we review financial aid appeals, we are in contact with students or if it's a parent that has initiated that, we would be communicating as best we can with that parent as well, advising of the outcome of any appeal. If we have questions, if we need additional information, ultimately, if there is a change to the financial aid award, a student would see that revised financial aid award online, we would communicate out that there had been a change. In some cases, depending on the additional aid that a student was eligible for, that could be in the form of low interest loans or work study that a student might need to accept. If a student through an appeals process is eligible for additional federal or university grant funds, those will be processed and accepted automatically on the student's behalf. A very common question at this time of the year is around the timeline of review of financial aid appeals. When will an appeal be finalized? When will that be reviewed relative to when the bills are due on August 19th? The first thing I'd say at the outset is we are reviewing appeals both quickly, but as you can imagine, we want to ensure that each of these gets our full time and attention and that we do work with families to fully understand the circumstances that they're facing. So we want to work through them as promptly as possible, but I think our primary focus is making sure that each one gets the attention that it deserves. We make every effort to process those with an awareness of the bill due date, but it's not something that we can guarantee. Depending on the nature of an appeal, what information we might need, it is possible that an appeal would be finalized after the bill due date. So our advice is to use the financial aid award that you have at this point in time for your planning purposes and for making a plan to address the bill that's due in August. If an appeal is processed and approved after the bill has come due and after the bill has been paid, we will still process that appeal retroactively and there may be cases where that results in a loan that was borrowed now can be reduced or a payment plan that was set up now can be reduced to reduce those remaining payments. Or if the balance was paid directly using one of the kind of electronic check or 529 payment and then after the fact there's additional financial aid resources, then there would potentially be a refund that would go back out to the student or the payer. So again, as you look out over the next month or so, kind of using the financial aid award that currently exists for that kind of creating that plan and then we'll be continuing to review appeals again as quickly as we are able to. Want to change gears just a little bit and hit on a couple of questions that come up as folks do begin to look forward into the semester and into future years. And of course, not a question that folks want to be thinking about, but one that I think is important to think about and want to speak to is what happens if a student does need to withdraw. And so I would recommend that everyone be familiar with what's posted here, which is the university's tuition refund schedule and that applies for both medical and non-medical withdrawals of any type. And so for the first two weeks of the semester through the 12th of September, a student can withdraw and receive a credit back of 100% of the tuition and fees for those classes. After that, there's a short period of time, basically two weeks where there's a prorated credit amount. There's a week where a student would withdraw and get a 50% credit a week following that where a student would get a 25% credit of tuition and fees. And there are no refunds of tuition and fees after the 26th of September. For students that are living on campus and withdraw from the university, if they withdraw through September 26th, their housing and meal charges are prorated based on the number of days that they were on campus and the usage of their meal plan after September 26th. Again, there would not be a refund that is issued. Financial aid can also be impacted by a withdrawal and the exact impact of that is going to depend on the timing of where we are in the semester, the type of financial aid that a student has. So we always recommend that if students are considering withdrawing that they be in touch with our office so that we can help them understand both the impact of that and also talk about, okay, what does that look like as a student maybe is taking some time off and then looking to return to the university and crafting a plan there. Looking out in terms of renewing financial aid for subsequent years, there are often questions about what the requirements are there. We're often asked whether the FAFSA is required if students are only looking to renew university academic merit scholarships. So UVM merit scholarships do not require the FAFSA. So if that is all that a student has and all that they wish to receive, the FAFSA is not explicitly required. Having said that, I would want everyone to keep in mind that the FAFSA is the gateway not just to need-based grant aid, but it is also the gateway for students who wish to borrow through the federal student loan programs. And it is also required if parents are using that federal direct parent plus loan for their financing. To maintain merit scholarship eligibility, there are really two core requirements. The student needs to remain continuously enrolled as a full-time student and maintain a cumulative GPA of at least 3.0. We evaluate that GPA at the end of every spring semester. So a student who's coming in in the fall will have that GPA at the end of the fall semester. Hopefully it's above the 3.0. If it happens that it's a little under that, they have the spring semester to potentially pull back up to meet that 3.0 requirement. Those GPAs, those merit scholarships are always renewed immediately after the spring semester. Turning to eligibility for need-based and federal financial aid, there is a little bit more involved. So here's where the FAFSA is going to be required. Eligibility for all need-based and federal aid is reevaluated annually. Each year there's a new FAFSA. There's new financial information reported there. So you do want to file the FAFSA every year. You want to be filing in the fall. The FAFSA is available as of October 1st. So in a scant few months here, the FAFSA will be available for the 23-24 academic year. I don't really think the FAFSA is scary. Some people think it is. Maybe you associate it with Halloween and so you want to file the FAFSA before Halloween, file in October. The other piece that is applicable with federal financial aid is that students do need to maintain satisfactory academic progress. There's two main components to that. Students need to successfully earn the credits that they're taking. So students need to successfully complete at least two-thirds, 67% of the credits that they attempt. So that means that they're passing those classes. So withdrawals, incompletes, failing grades, those are things that impact that completion rate piece and could put financial aid in jeopardy. Students do also for federal and need-based aid need to maintain a minimum cumulative GPA. That requirement does vary a little bit across the university for the majority of our colleges and majors. It's a 2.0 requirement for federal and need-based financial aid, but there are some specific programs notably in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences that do have a higher GPA requirement because those programs have higher requirements for the students to remain enrolled. And you can find kind of details on those requirements on our website. I think with that we are through sort of the questions that we had at the outset. And what I'll begin doing now is looking through the questions that folks have posted. You can continue to post those. And we're not going to be responding in writing to each of those, but I'm going to go through and answer as many of those as I can. So feel free to keep posting those in. There are a couple of questions about 529 plans. So I'll endeavor to speak to those. So one was whether a family could pay the bill out of pocket. So maybe pay the bill out of a checking account or something like that and then use a 529 plan to get to sort of reimburse yourself. I think that would be possible, but I want to provide a couple of other thoughts there. So first of all, 529 payments can generally be issued either directly to the university or they can generally also be issued out to the 529 plan holder. And so typically when you go to request your 529 plan payment, you'll indicate whether you want payment sent directly to the university or to you as an individual. And I think it's split. We see a great many folks that do have those payments sent directly to us so that there isn't a need to to sort of make an upfront payment and then get reimbursement. Other folks like to have the payment sent to them directly and then make payment from there. If you are having the 529 disbursement sent directly to UVM, you may be concerned about how do I know that that payment will reach UVM by the August 19th due date. I think that that is an appropriate concern and question. Many of the 529 plans are behind the scenes actually still cutting and sending a paper check to our office. So you're requesting a 529 payment on August 12th. There's not a guarantee that we will have that money in hand by the 19th. But what I would recommend is when you request your 529 distribution, send our office an email. You can send us a copy of the distribution request or let us know how much you've asked for, the date you asked for that. That's as Terry was talking about earlier. That's that payment information that we would be looking for from you. So we know how you're planning to approach the bill due date. And if we know that you've asked for a 529 distribution for your remaining payment, that may be sufficient to kind of avoid any sort of late, late, late fee if we know that that's we know from you that that's coming. There was another question about whether a 529 plan could be linked to the payment plan or if those should be paid directly. I think it would be challenging to link the 529 plan to that monthly payment plan. It would be much more, much more efficient, much easier to identify the amount of the of the 529 plan that you expect to use this semester and have that sent as one payment to the university. If that is not enough to cover the entire balance, so many families might be taking a portion through a 529 plan and maybe then there's a remaining amount they want to use a payment plan for. So in that scenario, send the 529 payment in its entirety to UVM for the semester and then you can use the payment plan for the remaining amount. But trying to time your 529 distribution requests to monthly payments that are due I think would be a lot of really extra time and energy and difficult to time really perfectly. Let me just see if there were any other 529 questions. It looks like one has an option to electronically send it to UVM or request that the check be mailed. Most of behind the scenes most of the payments are coming into us by check to that PO box. We are not set up to receive those funds wired from the individual companies. So I would elect to go the route of having that sent by check because candidly, I think that's what's going to happen behind the scenes regardless. And again, shoot us an email when you have that request so we know to be on the lookout for that. All right, let's see. Question about a student who's received local scholarship. And in this case and local scholarships are kind of all over the map. Some of them, the scholarship check gets sent right to UVM. It's payable to UVM. In the case of this individual, this was a check that was just made payable directly to the student. The student has been issued that check. They've deposited that and are planning to use that to help with costs this fall. The question is, is there anything else that needs to be done? And the answer is yes. Our office does need to be aware of all scholarship and outside resources that a student is receiving. And that's true whether the payments are coming directly to UVM or if they were paid directly to the student. Eligibility for need-based financial aid and federal aid does require that we be aware of those external scholarship resources. So if you or your student is receiving scholarships, which aren't reflected in the current financial aid award, you should notify our office of those. Again, best way there is going to be by email. You can send us an email that just kind of itemizes what's happening there or if you have copies of the award letters, you can send those along so that we can incorporate those into the financial aid award. That often raises another set of questions of like, well, wait a minute, what does that mean? What's the impact going to be to a student's award? Every student's financial aid award, financial circumstances, the amount of scholarships they're receiving from the local community, those all vary from student to student. So I can't give a universal answer, but what I can say is that in the vast majority of circumstances, these local community-based scholarships that students are receiving, the result is less for the student or family to pay out of pocket or borrow by way of loans or pay through a payment plan. Having said that, there are some cases where because a student is receiving a certain amount of external scholarship resources that their need-based financial aid is going to be adjusted, and certainly if that's the case, we want to be able to communicate that as soon as possible, and as a result would ask that you communicate that to us as soon as you can. Okay, question is from someone who's completed the FAFSA, and there's a requirement for loan counseling, and who should be doing that? So the loan counseling requirements for the federal direct loans, those are student requirements. So these are federal student loans barred in the student's name, so there should be a student login to studentloans.gov, which the student would use to complete those requirements. That should be the same login as was used to complete the FAFSA. The FAFSA is in the student's name, so those FAFSA credentials are the students, and so that same login should be the student for completing those loan counseling and promissory note requirements. Question here about student employment and work-study jobs, and how to search for those and identify which jobs are available. So our student employment website is uvm.edu slash student employment, and students can get access in there to our jobs database. That jobs database will indicate which jobs are open to students who have federal work-study. Some jobs are only open to students who are federal work-study eligible. Other jobs are open to all students, regardless of their work-study eligibility, and you should see indication of that within the jobs database, so you know which jobs to potentially apply for. The other thing I'll just mention while on the topic of student employment and kind of searching for jobs, the jobs database is not static. So if you were to go and look at the jobs that are posted there today, there may be new jobs posted a week or two weeks from now as departments on campus continue to identify the openings that they have for the fall. Question about how you can be sure that you have accepted your financial aid. So any grants and scholarships will be accepted automatically. The loans and federal work-study, if you've accepted those, you'd see that as the status. If you went back into the financial aid award online, you would see that those showed a status of accepted rather than kind of an offered status. Some questions about kind of the billing process. So question from a proxy user who is set up as a proxy but has not received an email that the statement was available. So there's a couple of possibilities there. So we generated the statements for the fall semester on or around July 15th. It was the tail end of last week. So if you were set up as a proxy user after that, then you would not have been set up as a proxy to receive that initial email but should have access to log in at this time to view the account and view the statement. If your student set you up as a proxy before July 14th or so, like more than a week ago, you should have received an email last Thursday or Friday morning with that billing notification. So if you believe that you're set up for proxy access but you didn't get an email from us last week, that could be a sign of one of maybe two things. Maybe our billing email went into a spam folder which does occur or it could be a sign that your student has not fully completed the proxy setup process. There are two steps to that. A student goes in and they say, here's the name of the individual. I'd like to be a proxy user. Here's their email address. That's step one. Students need to take a second step to go in and say, I authorize this individual to view my billing information and my financial aid information or one or the other. So I would say have your student log back in, make sure that that proxy process was fully completed there. Question about when and how will students receive statements on their loan? So I'm thinking this is a question about how will a student know when those loans are actually due for monthly payments? So the federal direct subsidized and unsubsidized loans which are in the student's name, those payments begin six months after either the student graduates or takes time off, falls below half time status. And what will happen is once the loan is fully processed for the year, that loan will be assigned to a servicer by the federal government. That servicer will do the monthly billing. The student will have an online portal where they can view and make payments and you'll get information directly from that federal loan servicer. So that will not be from the university or through the university. That will be with the federal government. They contract with a few different companies to do the process of sending those billing statements and whether that's by mail or online is going to be information that you would get directly from the servicer there. So here's a question about if somebody has overpaid or if there's a credit balance later on in the semester, how is that issued? If you've overpaid or if there's loan resources that overpay the account, we will be looking to issue those out as refunds. Exactly when that happens and where is that going to go does depend on the specific situation. So there are some cases where there's money coming in from a variety of sources. There might be a parent loan as part of the equation. There might be student loans. There maybe is a payment that's come in from another third party. So all of that can impact where are we going to send the refund and exactly when is that going to be issued. But if you do see at any point that you have a credit balance on the account, you can certainly get in touch with us to kind of talk that through. If students have an overpayment from financial aid, we will begin issuing those refunds automatically beginning the week of August 22nd. Okay, question about the payment plan and the question is if we start the payment plan tonight, will the total still be split over five payments? So if you go on enroll in a payment plan this evening, if that's the next item on your agenda, the way that's going to work is you're going to make one payment today when you enroll. That's going to be the first payment, the first of five. The next payment is going to be due right around the corner on August 1st. So you're going to have two payments kind of right back to back. You're going to have one that you pay today. That's the July payment as you enroll. You're going to have a payment that's due August 1st and then you would go from there September, October, November. So that's how that would play out for those that are enrolling at this point in time. Okay, question about we recently got a room assignment but don't know what kind of room it is and whether those adjustments have happened on the bill. So great question. When we do the billing for the fall, it is before all those housing assignments have been finalized. And so all of our incoming students are we bill initially for the traditional double room rate. And as this question implies, residence life is in the process of finalizing and communicating those housing assignments and that may result in some adjustments. So if a student is in a more expensive room, maybe a suite of some sort or a single, then there may be an additional charge. Some students who may be in a triple room may receive a credit. Those have not come through to students' accounts yet. Residence life again is in the process of finalizing and will begin sending those over to students' accounts over the kind of the coming weeks. I don't have an exact date there, but that will be happening in the near future. And again, that's where you may see either a credit or potentially an additional charge posted there. Let's see. Some questions about just the nature of the presentation. Yes, this will be posted and made available online. Probably will be available online and maybe within a week or so it does go through a process to get captions put on there and then will be posted online. Let's see. Question about somebody who signed a promissory note, accepted a loan, indicated they wanted to borrow that loan and now maybe has changed their mind, maybe wants to not borrow the loan and just make a payment instead. Certainly possible to make adjustments to loans that have been accepted. And it goes the other way as well. If you declined a loan and now are rethinking, oh, maybe we want to borrow that, that's possible as well. You won't be able to make those changes directly online. So send our office an email. Again, the email address on the screen there, sfs at uvm.edu and let us know what adjustments you're looking to make and we can work with you on that front. In terms of that process of accepting federal aid, if students haven't accepted loans, if the loans, you're not seeing those on the billing statement at all, you're not seeing them reflected. They probably have not been accepted. Students are going to want to go in online to their MyUVM account, their portal. They're going to go to the Student Financial Services section. They're going to go to view their financial aid award and that's where they would be able to go in and just do a drop down of accept or decline based on the choice that that you'd like to make. Some questions about scholarships and and just sort of being conscious of time here. Take a quick look. So a couple will probably answer a couple more. Some questions about scholarships. One is if a student's GPA falls below the 3.0 requirement for cumulative GPA requirement for merit scholarships after the spring semester, what happens there? So there's not a probationary period beyond that. So we give students that first year. If a student's GPA after the spring semester is below the 3.0 requirement, the scholarship would be withdrawn. But having said that, we do provide a path for students to regain their scholarship eligibility in a subsequent year. So we do the scholarship reviews for all students at the end of every spring. So if a student at the end of their first year is below that 3.0 requirement and the scholarship is then withdrawn, it would be withdrawn for their sophomore year. But at the end of their sophomore year, now the GPA is back at or above a 3.0 cumulative, then that student would have re-earned that scholarship for their junior year. All right, I'm going to take sort of in our last minute or so here to see any other questions we might be able to get in. One is if a student has an overage or an overpayment on their account, can they have it applied to the future semester? Yes, we can hold those credit balances on accounts for future semesters. If that's what you would like, just let us know. Again, send us an email to communicate that. Some questions about the timing and how housing assignments are communicated. That piece is not my area of expertise. I know that residents' life works tirelessly over the summer to finalize those housing assignments. How they kind of get everybody in a spot is amazing on some levels and I can't speak to that in detail. So I don't know the exact details of the timing there of when those are finalized and communicated. I do know that shortly after those are communicated to the student, if there is an adjustment to the student's account that those would be posted to our office and to the student's account accordingly. So I want to be respectful of time. It's just a minute past eight o'clock. I know that there are some questions that we have not answered. I also know that if we stayed all evening, we might not answer all questions. And I know that many of you may not have a question tonight, but you may have one a day or a week or two months from now. And whenever that time may be, I encourage you to be in contact with our office myself. My colleagues, Jan and Terry, who were on the event with us this evening and all of our colleagues who are joining us and do our work each day, happy to assist you in navigating the questions that you may have. We look forward to working with you and seeing your students on campus in the fall. So I thank you very much for your time and wish everyone a pleasant evening. Thank you.