Consortium Agreements

Occasionally a student wants to enroll simultaneously at EOU and another quarter-based college, and the student will want to combine the hours at both institutions for financial aid purposes. It is possible to receive financial aid under these circumstances as long as certain requirements are met:

The course(s) you take at the other institution must be a requirement of your degree program and transferable to EOU; and

The course(s) you take at the other institution are not offered at EOU, or your degree completion will be significantly delayed due to course sequencing and/or prerequisite requirements for EOU courses; and

You must be concurrently enrolled for at least six credits per quarter at EOU; and

The host institution is not a semester or clock-hour institution.

General Information

Your financial aid will be awarded by the institution from which you will receive your degree. The school from which you will graduate is the “home” institution that must process a consortium agreement with the other school, also called the “host” institution.

The purpose of a consortium agreement is to ensure disbursement of the proper amount of financial aid. Consortium agreements will only be processed if they are necessary for you to receive your financial aid.

You must take enough credit hours at EOU to qualify for financial aid, at least six hours for undergraduates and five hours for graduate students. If you enroll simultaneously at EOU and another school, the total registration hours between the two schools will be used to determine your financial aid eligibility.

You will be responsible for paying all program fees at the other institution using the financial aid that is refunded to you by the EOU Student Accounts Office. EOU will not make payment directly to the other school.

If you receive financial aid for classes taken at another college or university, EOU must receive an official transcript of these courses, even though the grades could be detrimental to your overall grade-point average. It is your responsibility to provide an official transcript to EOU. You may have to pay transcript fees to the host institution. Note: We will take unofficial transcripts at the end of summer, fall, and winter quarters to calculate your satisfactory academic progress. We will require the official academic transcript at the end of spring quarter. If a student fails to provide an official transcript at the end of spring quarter, we will not process financial aid for the next award year until we receive the official transcript.

Procedures

Speak to your advisor to ensure that the courses you wish to take at the “host” institution will transfer to your degree program here. Your advisor will also have to sign the consortium agreement form to verify that the courses are applicable. Remedial and vocational/technical courses will not transfer and very few exceptions are allowed. You may not use classes that you are auditing for the consortium agreement. Also, you may not repeat courses using the consortium agreement without first contacting both your advisor and the financial aid office.

1. Download and print out the consortium agreement form. Be sure to download the correct form! All colleges, OTHER THAN OSU, require the Individual Consortium Agreement. If you are unsure, please contact our office.

2. Fill out the student section and be sure to sign the form. Please read through the form carefully, as it contains important information.

3. Have your advisor sign the form. If you do not live near your advisor, you can fax or scan and email the form to your advisor.

4. Once your advisor signs the form, you will need to do one of two things:

a) Ask your advisor to send the form to the host school on your behalf; or

b) Get the form from your advisor so that you can send it to the host school.

5. The host school must verify your enrollment and costs for the term, sign the form, and return the form to the financial aid office at EOU.

When we receive the form, we will process it within 24 hours of receipt, excluding weekends. During disbursement and the first two weeks of the term, we are especially busy, and we may exceed the 24 hour processing time. We will only accept consortium agreements through the second week of the term.

Based on the above procedures, it is important to plan enough time for all these steps to occur. Ideally, the form will get to us well before the first day of disbursement for the term. Be sure to plan accordingly! Call the host school in advance and ask them what their procedures are for processing consortium agreements where they are the host school. Be aware that, as a consortium student, your aid payments may be delayed.

Consortium Agreement Forms

Consortium agreement forms can be found on the financial aid web site forms page.