Disbursement involves posting the amount of financial aid for which you are eligible to your student account. Disbursements follow this pattern:
The Cashier's Office bills you for educational charges through your student account.
Financial Aid releases financial aid funds that you are eligible for to your student account.
The Cashier's Office uses your financial aid to pay all of your institutional charges.
Based on your preferences, the Cashier's Office also use your financial aid to pay for non-institutional charges (up to $200)*.
*More on non-institutional charges: When applying for financial aid, you set your authorization preferences. These preferences determine whether we can pay current and/or up to $200 of prior non-institutional charges (e.g. parking fees; library fines, etc.) with your financial aid.
Any left over money is known as a "refund". The Cashier's Office sends this refund to you through BankMobile Disbursements®.
(Note: You will want to set up your "Refund Preferences" with BankMobile Disbursements®. For more information about setting up your preference, please visit our BankMobile Disbursements page.
While we award and disburse financial aid by semester (term), there are different disbursement rules for each type of aid.
General disbursement rules:
The aid you receive may vary from announced award amounts for many reasons, including a change in enrollment status, late start enrollment for courses, loan fees, and/or a change in basic eligibility.
Award amounts will fluctuate as you add and drop classes, but we make a final adjustment on a financial aid census date known as the “freeze date.” This date is usually on the fifth Monday of the term. You will be frozen once you have a financial aid application on file and have been packaged. We ignore any fluctuation in enrollment that occurs after the freeze date, and any registration that takes place after the freeze date will not result in additional credits towards the term total for financial aid purposes. Note: If you are not enrolled & packaged when we run our freeze, we will freeze your enrollment on the Monday after you register for a class and have been packaged.
Most programs have an enrollment requirement or prorate amounts based on enrollment. The following programs have set requirements:
Federal Pell Grants
Federal Direct Loans
Cal Grants
We will pay all Cal Grant funds after the freeze date so that we can define the proper enrollment status of the student prior to payment.
We disburse many kinds of aid in increments based on enrollment. Students may receive only a partial payment in the beginning of a semester if he or she has enrolled in late start classes.
For example: Bob registered for 4 classes—each worth 3 credits—making him a full-time student in fall. Three of his classes (9 credits) begin on August 20 and the other class starts October 1. In this case, Bob will only receive aid for 9 credits at first. The remaining financial aid will not be disbursed until the student begins the other 3 credits on October 1.
Cuesta disburses your funds to BMTX, Inc. according to the rules listed above. If you do not claim these funds and you are still eligible to receive them, we will continue to attempt to give you these funds for 240 days from the date of the original disbursement. After that date, we will modify your award and return your funds to their source.
If BMTX, Inc sends you an EFT (direct deposit) and it is rejected OR if BMTX, Inc. sends you a check and it is returned to sender, we will quit attempting to deliver the funds by 45 days from the time of the rejection/return.