1. All Title IV funds are awarded based on the information received from the FAFSA. You must complete the FAFSA to be eligible. The FAFSA can be found at www.fafsa.gov.
2. For financial aid purposes, our regular academic year is 24 credits across 32 academic weeks. This includes four 8-week terms of Fall 1, Fall 2, Spring 1 and Spring 2. Students may also elect to take courses in the Summer term (also 8 weeks in length) outside the regular academic year.
New students starting in the Summer may apply their financial aid to either the past or next academic year. Students beginning in a term other than Summer should complete the FAFSA for that academic year. For example, students planning to start in Summer 2020 could complete either the 2019-2020 FAFSA or the 2020-2021 FAFSA. However, students planning to start in Fall 1 2020 or later should complete the 2020-2021 FAFSA, once it is available.
If you have any questions about which FAFSA you should file, please contact our financial aid department at financialaid@cityvision.edu for clarification.
3. Once the FAFSA is received and processed in our office the student’s file will be pulled for awarding in groups based on the date all the information was received, including any required verification documents. Awards are made on a first-come, first-served basis.
As part of processing the FAFSA, an Estimated Family Contribution (EFC) will have been calculated for the student by the Department of Education using the Federal Methodology (FM). The FM is a formula that consider income and assets and size of the family and number in college to determine the EFC. It also applies standard allowances against those resources to determine how much you and/or your family can contribute.
4. An estimated Cost of Attendance (COA) will be assigned by City Vision University for packaging purposes. The COA includes all tuition costs and the cost of books and supplies as direct costs. City Vision University is an online-only institution, but the COA also includes the cost of the student’s living expenses for the year as indirect costs.
A COA is calculated to establish the amount that can be awarded.
The standard COA figures for the current financial aid year may be found here.
5. The Estimated Family Contribution (EFC) is subtracted from the COA to determine each student’s demonstrated financial need.
COA – EFC = NEED
The sum of all need based awards will not exceed the need of the student.
The sum of all awards (need and non-need) will not exceed the COA.
The packaging methodology for undergraduate students is as follows:
- Pell Grants are automatically awarded based on the student’s EFC and the Pell tables published by the US Department of Education.
- Other sources of financial aid, such as Workforce Investment Act and Veteran’s Educational Benefits, are included.
- All institutionally awarded tuition scholarships are included.
- If the student is eligible for AmeriCorps funds, those funds are added.
Pell Grant Formula
Pell grants are calculated using Pell formula 3. For students who are enrolled full-time for an aid year, this is the total Pell awarded for aid year / 4. If the student also takes courses in the Summer term, they will receive an additional amount for that term equal to total Pell for year / 4, not to exceed 150% of their eligibility for the year.
If a student is half-time in a particular term, instead of full-time, then the Pell grant is pro-rated to be one half of what it otherwise would be.
A student is full-time if he or she takes 6 or more credits in a given term; a student is half-time if he or she takes 3.
Tuition Billing Date
City Vision does not bill students until after they complete the 5th week of each term or until after the 8th week of the term (whether or not they have completed the 5th week), whichever comes first. We do this because as an online-only university, if students are late submitting their assignments, we may not have an accurate estimate of students’ attendance. Because students attending less than 2 weeks are given a full refund and those attending 2 to 5 weeks are given a partial refund, by waiting to bill students, we are able to have a more accurate attendance and bill. Refunds are given based on the date that the bill is paid either directly by the student or by financial aid.