Disbursements – How you receive your financial aid
All students are given an account with LMU's Student Accounts department. Your account is "charged" for your tuition, fees, housing, and meal plan.
How Financial Aid Funds Reach Your Student Account
Your financial aid will be “credited” to your account to pay your LMU charges, and you or your parents can make payments to your student account to cover your charges.
Crediting of financial aid to your account is called “disbursement.” In general, the financial aid office begins the process of disbursing aid to students’ accounts 10 days prior to the start of each semester and continues to disburse aid weekly throughout the semester. All aid awarded to you for the academic year will be split evenly between the Fall and Spring semesters. Further, all Federal Direct Loans (student and parent) will have loan fees subtracted from the accepted amount prior to disbursement.
The majority of your financial aid award comes from LMU, federal and state grants, federal and private loans, as well as some types of scholarship funds, and will be credited directly to your student account.
Some exceptions to this would be if you are a recipient of a Cal Grant B Access Award. You may request that this award be provided directly to you by completing the Cal Grant B Access Refund Request Form rather than credit your student account because this award is designated for costs including living expenses, transportation, supplies, and books.
Yellow Ribbon awards will be posted to your student account after the Add/Drop deadline for each semester.
Also, student employment awards do not credit your Student Account, and you will receive a bimonthly paycheck once you begin working. However, you may choose to apply your paycheck to your student account to pay your LMU charges.
Transfer Monitoring Hold
LMU Financial Aid is required to monitor students who may have previously received aid at another institution through the NSLDS database. This process must be done even if you did not receive financial aid at any other institution.
A Transfer Monitoring Hold prevents the disbursement of your financial aid for 7 days. However, this hold does not prevent your ability to register or change your schedule. There is no action needed by the student during this process. The removal of this hold is automatic and you do not need to speak with a Financial Aid representative to have this hold removed or your aid disbursed.
If you received financial aid at another institution during the same academic year you are attending or planning to attend LMU, you must contact your previous institution to have any pending aid disbursements canceled.
Notice of Disbursement and Right to Cancel a Federal Direct, or PLUS loan
As a student or parent borrower, you have the right to cancel the entire loan or any portion (a specific disbursement) of any Federal Direct or PLUS loan. Requests to cancel a specific loan disbursement may be submitted prior to the date of crediting to your account or within 14 days of notification. To request the cancellation of loan disbursement, please complete a Revision Request Form. If a disbursement has already credited to your account then you may only request to cancel that disbursement if a refund has not been generated. Please note that you can request to cancel future disbursements.
If a refund has not been generated you must request to cancel the disbursements within 14 days of notification that the funds disbursed to your account.
If a refund has already been generated you must repay any loan funds you wish to return directly to the U.S. Department of Education by contacting your loan servicer. For loan servicer contact information, visit https://nsldsfap.ed.gov/nslds_SA/.
The process to Purchase Books and Supplies
Federal Pell Grant eligible students are allowed to obtain their credit balance by the 7th day of a payment period. LMU initiates disbursements ten days before the beginning of each payment period. LMU does not have an automatic procedure for students to purchase books and supplies, so no opt-out is applicable.
If there is a credit balance on your Student Account after your financial aid has disbursed, you may request a refund to use to purchase books and supplies. You may also sign up for automatic refunds with Student Accounts so the credit balances will be automatically transferred to your own bank account. For more information click here.
Completing Disbursement Requirements
To ensure that your financial aid can disburse to your student account:
- Accept or Decline financial aid offered to you on PROWL
- Enroll in enough units to be considered full-time if your financial aid award is based on full-time enrollment.
- Full-time for Undergraduates is considered 12 or more units
- Full-time for Graduates will vary based on the program. Click here for details.
- If you have accepted loans, check your PROWL account to make sure all loan disclosure requirements, entrance counseling and promissory notes have been completed.
- If you have been selected for verification, you must have submitted all verification requirements.
- It may take up to 3 days to complete verification once you have submitted all the required documents.
The Student Account Center
To make a payment or enroll in a payment plan, please visit the Student Account Center. The Student Account Center is also accessible through the 'System Logins' drop-down menu in MyLMU.
The Student Account Center is a secure, 24/7 online service that allows students/authorized users to:
- Pay tuition, fees, room, and board
- Make housing deposits by web check
- Make Flexi deposits by web check
- Set-up authorized users for secure third-party access
- Enroll in a payment plan
- Schedule future payments
- Sign-up to have refunds directly deposited into your bank account
- View your monthly statement
The Student Accounts website is your resource to learn about:
- Budget Calculator/Payment Options/Billing - Calculate an estimated Budget based on Housing Choice & Meal Plan
- Refund Policy
- Cost of Tuition & Fees
If you have any questions about your student account, please contact the Student Accounts department at 310.338.2711 or by email at StudAcct@lmu.edu.