OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
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The 2024-2025 FAFSA is now available. Learn more at Future Student and Current Students.
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Federal regulations limit how many times federal financial aid may be used to retake a course. Repeating coursework affects federal student aid eligibility in multiple ways. More information about the non-financial aid impact of repeating coursework may be found through the Office of the Registrar’s website or from your academic advisor.
Federal aid may only be used to retake a course one time after a passing grade (D- or better) is received. We cannot make exceptions to this federal rule even in cases where the grade earned does not meet departmental requirements. When a previously passed course is repeated a second time, we must adjust that student’s budget and federal aid to exclude it. This adjustment may result in a reduction or loss of federal aid eligibility for that term.
To stay in good standing for federal financial aid, a student must maintain a pace of completion of at least 67%. Retaking a previously passed course or retaking courses that have been failed 2 or more times will count against pace of completion.
See our Satisfactory Academic Progress page for more information on pace and maintaining eligibility.
As described in Academic Regulation AR20, “If a student repeats an Oregon State University course, the grade from each attempt will appear on the student’s academic record but only the second attempt will count toward the student’s institutional credits, requirements, and grade-point average.” For financial aid purposes, this means the grade received for the third, excluded, retake cannot be used to increase a student’s OSU GPA.
In the majority of OSU programs, students are allowed a maximum timeframe of 270 credits to complete their first bachelor’s degree. Repeating courses may cause a student to reach that maximum timeframe before their degree is complete.
See our Satisfactory Academic Progress page for more information on maximum timeframe and maintaining eligibility.
Multiple retakes may cause a student to reach the federal aggregate aid maximums before their degree is complete. Students should carefully track of how close they are to reaching these aggregate limits which, once reached, may not be appealed.