Financial Aid Regulations

High School Diploma, GED requirements

Federal regulations require that students have a high school diploma, GED, or the equivalent from an accredited high school in order to be eligible for federal financial aid. If you received a California Certificate of Completion on or after Fall 2003, you may now be eligible to receive a diploma. Contact your California high school to see if you qualify.

Pell Grant Lifetime Eligibility Used (LEU)

A federal regulation was passed that limits the Pell grant to the equivalent of 12 full-time semesters or 600% LEU for your entire academic career. This regulation is retroactive to the first time you attended college and received a Pell grant. It does not include terms you did not receive a Pell grant.

You can log on to www.studentaid.gov and view your LEU.

Undeclared Major not eligible

Per federal regulations, only students with a declared, eligible academic major are eligible for Federal Financial Aid. Undeclared majors and Skills Certificates are not eligible. See Cabrillo's eligible majors in the Financial Aid Handbook.

Note: If you are a student borrower changing your major may affect the status of your student loan subsidies. Talk to Financial Aid before changing your major.

Financial Aid Repeat Policy

Federal regulation limits the number of times a student may get paid financial aid for courses being repeated. The regulation states that undergraduate students may only receive federal financial aid funding for one repeat of a previously passed course. If a student fails the second attempt no more financial aid will be given to repeat the course a third time.

Note: All repeated courses do affect SAP calculations. A repeated course, along with the original attempts, must be counted as attempted units whether or not you have been paid for them.

Financial Aid is required to monitor repeat classes for all periods of enrollment.

Please note that there is a separate State Repeat Policy for Admissions.