Financial Aid and Veteran Services

After completing the FAFSA, you'll receive an email from us once we have received your application from the Department of Education. Typically we can begin downloading applications mid-November* each year. You must be admitted to UWSP before a financial aid offer will be processed. Additionally, students must be making Satisfactory Academic Progress in order to receive financial aid. Please review other eligibility requirements.

View our Apply for Aid webpage for more information and next steps.

Absolutely! Many families mistakenly think that they don’t qualify for financial aid, so they don’t apply. The Student Aid Index (SAI), which is calculated when completing the FAFSA, will determine how much need based aid you could qualify for, such as federal Work Study, the federal Subsidized Direct Loan and even an institutional grant. Sources of non-need based aid include the federal Unsubsidized Direct Loan and the parent PLUS loan. Also, many scholarship applications require a completed FAFSA. Receipt of all these types of aid require the financial aid application.

See our FAFSA fact vs fiction handout for more information.

You do not need to file a separate application to receive financial aid during the summer. The summer semester leads our academic year, where the FAFSA you file for the upcoming fall is what is used to award financial aid for the summer semester. In most cases, you must be registered at least half-time to receive financial aid during the summer. If you already received your financial aid offer when you enroll in summer courses, please contact our office. View our Enrollment webpage for more information.

Some special situations may include loss of employment, marital separation/divorce, death, or out-of-pocket medical expenses not covered by insurance.

• If your FAFSA is selected for verification, you must submit all required, completed and signed documentation to the Financial Aid and Veteran Services office.
  
• Students must meet Satisfactory Academic Progress​ requirements or submit an appeal if they are not meeting those requirements.
  
• Some financial aid types require that you actively accept them in accesSPoint and all requirements must be completed.
  
• First time Federal Direct Loan borrowers are required to complete the loan Entrance Counseling and Direct Loan Master Promissory Note online at https://studentaid.gov.
• Checklist items on your accesSPoint must be completed before your financial aid can be disbursed.
  

In most cases, your loans are offered and disbursed equally based on your terms of enrollment. For example, if you enroll for the academic year, your total loan amount will be split equally between fall and spring semesters. If you enroll for summer, the cost of your summer program will be considered and the remaining loan amount divided equally between the fall and spring semesters.

If however, you graduate at the end of the summer and/or fall terms, your loan amount(s) may be prorated based on the number of credits for which you are enrolled.

Yes, it is possible!

• A consortium agreement may be used while attending two schools simultaneously. However, only one school can provide you financial aid. You will identify one school as your home school. This home school may be able to provide financial aid while you temporarily take classes at another school (host school). With an approved consortium agreement, it may be possible to enroll in some courses at UWSP and some at another institution. 

• The host school must be an approved Title IV school, meaning they have a federal Title IV code and can process federal financial aid. We will not approve a consortium if it is offered through a broker or an agency who does not work through a Title IV school. 

• Please contact our office to schedule an appointment with a counselor to go over the details of the consortium agreement. Typically, the Dean of your major must approve the courses taken elsewhere in order to have an approved consortium agreement.

• Are you 24 years old or will you be 24 prior to the end of the calendar year of the fall semester?
• Will you be working on a master's or doctorate program?
• Are you married?
• Do you have children who receive more than half of their support?
• Do you have dependents who live with you and who receive more than half of their support?
• At any time since you turned age 13, were both your parents deceased, were you in foster care or were you a dependent/ward of the court?
• Are you a veteran of or currently serving on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces?
• Are you or were you an emancipated minor?
• Does someone other than your parent or stepparent have legal guardianship of you?
  
• Did your high school, or school district homeless liaison, director of an emergency shelter transitional housing program, runaway or homeless youth basic center determine that you were an unaccompanied youth who was homeless or were self-supporting and at risk of being homeless?
  

If you cannot answer yes to at least one of these questions, then you will be considered to be a "dependent student" for financial aid purposes.

If you do not qualify for independent status according to the above but you have special circumstances that you believe make you an independent student, it may be possible to submit an appeal to our office. Parents’ unwillingness to help with educational expenses or the fact that you are not claimed on your parents’ tax return does not qualify a student for self-support status.

• a U.S. permanent resident and you have an Alien Registration Receipt Card (I551);
• a conditional permanent resident (I551-C); or
• another eligible noncitizen with an Arrival-Departure Record (I94) from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service showing any one of the following designations:
• "Refugee,"
• "Asylum Granted,"
• "Indefinite Parole" and/or "Humanitarian Parole," or
• "Cuban-Haitian Entrant."

If you are in the U.S. on an F1 or F2 student visa, or a J1 or J2 exchange visitor visa, or a G series visa (pertaining to international organizations), you are not a citizen or an eligible noncitizen and cannot receive federal financial aid from UWSP.

If you are not a U.S. citizen or eligible noncitizen, you may be eligible for private loans from lenders although most private loans require a U.S. citizen cosigner. You may also wish to check out UWSP’s International & Scholars Office.

For information on in school deferment and forbearance please visit https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/lower-payments/get-temporary-relief.​

Financial aid may be awarded to include any repetition of a course, as long as you have never passed the course. If you previously passed the course, you may include one repetition after passing. Any second or subsequent repetition of the passed course may not be included in your enrollment status for the purpose of receiving federal financial aid.

Students are eligible to receive financial aid only ONCE for a previously passed course. For example: you may take a course and receive a D. Then you may want to retake the course to achieve a higher grade. If the second attempt of the course is not the grade you are seeking (some courses require a C or higher), you are not eligible to receive aid for that course in future attempts.

If you withdraw from all other Title IV eligible courses in the payment period or period of enrollment and continue to attend only the course(s) you are repeating, you may not receive Title IV aid during that period, and you will be considered as a​ withdrawal for Title IV purposes. This is because a student is considered to be attending a Title IV eligible program only if he/she is attending one or more courses in that program for which the student is receiving Title IV, HEA program funds.

The regulations related to retaking coursework only apply to the definition of full-time for undergraduate students.