Federal Financial Aid Withdrawal Policy (Title IV)
What happens when you withdraw from college
If you drop or withdraw from classes—either officially or unofficially—CLC’s Financial Aid Office is required to review your eligibility for certain types of federal grants and loans. This review and recalculation process is called a “Return of Title IV Aid.”
These rules apply to:
- Federal Direct Loan
- Federal Pell Grant
- Federal PLUS Loan
- Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant (SEOG)
CLC uses a federally mandated formula to calculate how much of your federal aid was “earned” up to the time of your drop/withdrawal. The difference between your earned amount and the full amount you received must be returned to the federal government.
Financial aid questions?
Office of Financial Aid
Phone: (847) 543-2062
Email: finaid@clcillinois.edu
How we define withdrawal
A student is considered to have withdrawn when they do not complete all days scheduled to complete in a term.
Students enrolled in classes that do not span the entire term are considered withdrawn if, at the time of withdrawal, the student is not actively attending another class and did not provide confirmation of future attendance in the term.
Only classes that are eligible for federal financial aid are considered in the Return of Title IV review.
Calculating your earned funds
The federally mandated formula calculates a ratio of the days you attended to the days you were scheduled to attend in the term. This ratio includes:
- total federal funds disbursed to your student account (and possibly refunded to you); and
- any funds that you were eligible to receive and your institutional costs
How federal aid funds are returned
When CLC returns your unearned funds to the government, you will be billed for any balance due for any unearned refunds you received or institutional charges that are now unpaid because of the return.
- If you established a Deferred Payment Plan during registration, payments will be deducted from the account information you provided.
- If you are eligible for a post-withdrawal disbursement of Pell or FSEOG funds, the award will be disbursed to your account. Within 14 days of disbursement, CLC will pay any Title IV credit balance due to the student, less any authorized charges.
Financial aid returned by you and/or your parent or the college must be allocated in the following order:
- Federal Unsubsidized Direct Loan
- Federal Subsidized Direct Loan
- Federal Direct Parent Loan (PLUS)
- Federal Pell Grant
- Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant (SEOG)