Posts Tagged ‘GI Bill Payments’

John, you should focus on taking an English class – your writing is horrible! But to answer your question, the VA will not pay for you to retake a class if you passed the first one, which you did with a “D”. However, as absurd as it sounds, they would pay for you to retake the class if you had failed it the first time. With that logic, if you are going to barely pass a class, you would be better off failing it and retaking it to get a better grade. If you pass it with a low grade and want to retake it to better your GPA, you have to pay for it yourself.

The other thing to note is the VA will not pay for classes that are not on your degree plan, which is the second part of the equation. So if your second statistics class is not on your degree plan and you passed the first class, there is no way the VA will pay for it.

As far as getting paid Post 9/11 GI Bill housing allowance, the VA will not pay housing allowance on credits where they do not also pay the tuition. So if the class is not on your degree plan, that 4-credit class will not count into your total credits for that semester. If the credits you have left account for at least 51% of what your school considers full-time, then you would get a partial housing allowance. If that four credit class puts you under the 51% mark, then you won’t get any  housing allowance.

There are a couple of problems here. One is you don’t have to pull at least a “C” to pass the course according to GI Bill standards. All you have to do is not fail or get an “F”, so even a “D” is considered a passing grade.

Grades are assigned point values (because they are calculated into your GPA). If you get an “F”, you get 0 points and because it is averaged into your GPA, it would drop it. However, if you get a “D”, which has a point value higher than 0, it would increase your overall GPA and count toward graduation progression.

And two, courses that are failed or for which the grade does not meet minimum requirements for graduation may be certified for VA purposes if they are repeated. Courses that are successfully completed may not be certified for VA purposes if they are repeated. If students must take additional courses in order to raise their GPA to graduate, the courses must be courses that have not already been successfully completed by the student.

So if you squeak by with a passing grade, you will have to pay to retake the course – from your question, it doesn’t sound like something financially you prepared to do. If you fail the class, the VA may pay for you to take the course again, but keep in mind, it won’t be any easier the second time around and you risk failing the course twice. So do the best you can do and hope for a passing grade.

Haily, my advice is to tough it out. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by hanging in there. If you pass the class, you get your degree. If you fail the class, it is still a class you need to take at some point in time and it won’t be any easier the next time around, so focus and do the best you can to pass it.

If you do fail the class, most likely you will not have to pay anything back to the VA, however, the final decision rests with them. They normally allow a student a one-time drop of up to six credits without any repercussions as far as having to pay anything back.

The real issue with dropping a class now is after the implementation of the Post 9/11 GI Bill 2.0, now your housing allowance will drop as the amount you receive is calculated based on the number of credits you take along with the zip code of your school.

So while you were getting the full housing allowance by taking 12 credits, if you drop the class, you will only get 7/12th of the full amount –actually 60% instead of 58% because the VA rounds up to or down to the nearest tenth.