The Truth behind Student Refund Checks

It’s the time of the semester that all college students look forward to, the disbursement of refund checks. Every student enjoys seeing all that money being handed to them, but do they know exactly where it came from and how they should actually spend it?

The amount of a students refund check is calculated very simply. First the students financial aid package and loans are ran to cover all school expenses for the upcoming semester. After everything is paid for, if there is an overabundance of funds the remaining total is turned into a student refund.

Jon Goodwin, a former Central Michigan University Financial Aid counselor, says that students do need to be careful to make sure that all charges are accounted for on the student account before spending any money from their refund check.

“There are cases in which all charges are not on the students account by the time financial aid is ran and the student receives a larger refund amount that what they should have. In most cases this happens with bookstore charges,” says Goodwin.

According to Goodwin, the best way to avoid those situations is to contact receivable accounting when the student receives the refund and make sure that there is nothing left to be paid for the semester.

After the student receives the refund check it is up to their discretion on how to spend the money. In most cases students who receive refund checks are not sure if they are allowed to spend the money at free will or put it away towards school. Flint senior LaMarcus Howard was one of those students.

“I never realized that the money was completely mine to spend until about a year ago. I would spend bits and pieces of it, but I would put most of it away towards school, said Howard.

Goodwin says that CMU has a term call educational expenses for the way students should spend their refund checks. Educational expenses means the students can spend the money on anything deemed necessary by them which could mean rent, transportation, school, or even personal use.