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Graduate Student Handbook

Graduate Student Handbook

Refunds

Tuition Refunds

All refund requests must be submitted in writing to the Office of Student Financial Services, using the refund request form. Students who are disputing tuition charges must complete an academic petition form and submit it to the Registrar's Office no later than the end of the following semester. Petitions received after the deadline will be referred to Student Financial Services for review. All charges remain due until otherwise notified.

Tuition withdrawal credits are made for full-semester courses according to the following schedule:

Note: Refer to academic calendar for specific refund dates and for courses other than full-semester.

In case of withdrawal, scholarships initially credited toward tuition due are subject to the same withdrawal credit percentage as the tuition charge. In other words, there are no cash refunds of scholarships. In the event of disciplinary suspension or expulsion from the university, no refund of tuition charges will be made.

Room and Board Refunds

Due to the high fixed costs of graduate housing, room charges are for the entire year and are not refunded when a student withdraws from housing, except if the student meets all of the following conditions:

• Does not register at Bentley for any courses, graduates or is on an internship, or is dismissed for academic reasons;
  Informs the Office of Residential Services in writing no later than June 15 for the fall semester, or December 1 for the spring semester;
• Gains the approval of the director of residential services. Requests for exceptions should be directed in writing to the Residence Agreement Exception Committee, which reviews the petition and makes a recommendation to the director of residential services.
• No room refund is made to those who leave housing but continue to attend Bentley, or to those who fail to notify the university on or before the above dates. Only in extraordinary situations is the room charge refunded if these conditions are not met. Exceptions are decided by the director of residential services.

In the event of disciplinary suspension or dismissal from housing, no refund of housing charges will be made.

Return of Funds Policy for Federal Aid Recipients

A new federal regulation specifies how colleges must determine the amount of federal financial aid you earn if you withdraw from all classes during the semester. The new law requires that, when you withdraw, the amount of federal aid that you have earned up to that point is determined by a specific formula. If you received (or had applied to your account) less assistance than the amount that you earned, you will be able to receive those additional funds. If you received more assistance than you earned, the excess funds must be returned.

The amount of assistance that you have earned is determined by the percentage of the semester completed. For example, if you completed 30 percent of the semester, you earned 30 percent of the federal aid you were originally scheduled to receive. Once you have completed more than 60 percent of the semester, you are considered to have earned all of your federal assistance. If you received excess funds that must be returned, Bentley University must return a portion of the excess equal to the lesser of your qualifying institutional charges for the term multiplied by the unearned percentage of your funds, or the entire amount of the excess funds. If Bentley must return part of your financial aid, and the removal of those funds from your account creates a balance due, you will be billed for this balance.

If the university is not required to return all of the excess funds, you must return the remaining amount. Any loan funds that you must return, you 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.

Example:
A student has tuition charges of $9,696 and no room or board charges for the fall semester. The student pays $5,574 toward the bill and the rest is covered by a federal Stafford Loan for $4,122. The student withdraws from the university after completing 40% of the semester. The student is considered to have earned 40% of the aid received, or $1,649. The remaining 60%, or $2,473, must be returned. Bentley will return $2,473 of the loan from the student's account to the lender. This leaves an unpaid balance of $2,473 on the student's account. The student will be billed by the university for this amount and is responsible for paying since not all of the aid used to pay the initial bill was considered to have been earned by the student.