Questions that you may have as a student
Yes! It is a federal financial aid requirement that students only get financial aid for courses that meet their Program of Study. This is not Wheaton-specific. Many colleges/universities have already implemented CPOS software to aid their compliance with the federal requirements, and those who haven’t yet will be doing so soon.
NEW 10/12/22
If you do not receive federal financial aid, you are not required to follow CPOS-related guidance. Your faculty or staff advisors will not know whether or not you receive financial aid, however, so they will advise you according to CPOS-related guidance.
NEW 10/12/22
REVISED 3/10/23
Yes, of course you can still explore the liberal arts and take courses that are not meeting specific requirements in your degree program. With careful planning and strategic choices, you can take them in a semester in which you are already taking 12 credits of courses that are meeting requirements in your degree.
NEW 10/12/22
You should declare them as soon as you are ready to begin taking those required courses. Remember that courses you take toward minors, certificates, etc. will count toward your Program of Study. Not declaring those may result in courses not being CPOS-eligible.
NEW 10/12/22
Financial aid is not retroactively adjusted for prior semesters. Students can change their majors as needed from semester to semester without CPOS being affected as long as the courses they are taking apply to their degree when they change their major.
NEW 10/12/22
As long as a student has declared both majors, the requirements for both majors will count toward CPOS. If a student has a major in two different degrees (such as a B.A. in Sociology and a B.S. in Physics), all the courses required in each degree will also count toward CPOS – as long as the student finishes both degrees in the same semester.
NEW 10/27/22
REVISED 3/10/23
If you are pursuing two degrees at the same time, you'll be eligible for financial aid for courses that are meeting requirements in either degree. However, once you complete all the requirements for one bachelor's degree, you will no longer be eligible for financial aid.
NEW 10/12/22
Yes. These are prerequisites for the 201 language course. When you register for these prerequisites, they will appear as CPOS-eligible in Degree Works.
NEW 10/12/22
A degree-seeking Graduate School student will not be affected, as long as courses taken apply to the degree. Non-degree-seeking or Certificate students do not receive federal financial aid, and therefore will also not be affected.
NEW 10/12/22
REVISED 3/10/23
If not needed for your major, program, or degree, these electives would not be eligible for federal financial aid.
NEW 10/12/22
REVISED 3/10/23
Yes. Students who are working toward more than one degree (ex: B.A. and B.S.) will be awarded financial aid as long as at least 12 hours per semester count toward their program of study; however, these students will need to take care to not complete either degree prior to their final semester. We suggest holding back one Christ at the Core requirement for that final semester so both degrees are complete at the same time.
NEW 10/27/22
Undergraduate students who are receiving federal financial aid are advised to have a minimum of 12 credit hours that meet requirements for their degree in order to receive full-time federal financial aid. Undergraduate students can enroll for up to 18 credit hours without paying additional tuition. The additional 6 credit hours (beyond the required 12 credit hours for their program of study) can be electives that are not required for the degree.
NEW 10/27/22
REVISED 3/10/23
Degree Works now is getting smarter! We are programming it to show whether an elective is CPOS-eligible or CPOS-ineligible. In the future, by doing a “What-if” with “Look Ahead” in Degree Works, students can get a preview of the CPOS-eligibility of courses they plan to register for each term. Expect this upgraded functionality in mid-Spring 2023.
NEW 10/27/22
REVISED 3/10/23
As of now, two of the certificates that are being proposed are for pre-health students and for students who are taking prerequisite courses for the State of Illinois’ teacher credentialing that they plan to pursue after undergraduate graduation. If approved, these new curricula would allow students to complete these requirements and have the courses be CPOS-eligible.
NEW 10/27/22
The guidance is not changing. Students are still required to declare a major by the spring of their sophomore year.
NEW 3/10/23
No, you will not have financial aid from previous terms taken away if you took courses that no longer apply to your Program of Study.
NEW 3/10/23
All courses that are meeting the Christ at the Core requirements for Language Competency are now appearing in Degree Works and are CPOS-eligible.
NEW 3/10/23
Degree Works will not “split” a course into eligible or non-eligible. The whole course will be eligible.
NEW 3/10/23
No, transfer students will still need to meet the CPOS-eligibility criteria for all courses.
NEW 3/10/23
Advanced Placement credits, like dual enrollment credit or credit from other colleges/universities, are transfer credits that count toward a bachelor’s degree. They can apply to a student’s program of study, which includes the 124 credit hours needed for a bachelor’s degree. A student or academic advisor should review Degree Works to see how their Advanced Placement credits are meeting degree requirements.
NEW 3/10/23
Yes! In Degree Works, the prerequisite course label will identify which course it is a prerequisite for (such as “Prerequisite for MATH 235”). The number of required credits in the major or minor will also increase by the number of credits of the prerequisite course.
NEW 3/10/23
In most cases, the required credits increase when a student registers for a course that is a prerequisite for a requirement in the major. For example, if MATH 235 is a course requirement in the major, and the student registers for MATH 131, which is the prerequisite course to MATH 235, the number of credits required in the major for that student will increase by 4 credits.
NEW 3/10/23
It is possible that a course meets a degree requirement in one degree and not in the other. When the CPOS process is run, however, the course will be calculated as CPOS-eligible for federal financial aid, if it meets a requirement in at least one degree.
NEW 3/10/23
General electives above and beyond the requirements for a student’s Program of Study (which include majors, minors, certificates, concentrations, endorsements, and fellowship programs) will only be eligible for CPOS if the student has met all the requirements for their Program of Study and have not met 124 hours of coursework. Degree Works identifies general elective courses as CPOS-eligible and CPOS-ineligible.
NEW 3/10/23
Degree Works now has two ways to look at courses that were formerly in the "fallthrough" category (currently called the "General Electives" category): CPOS-eligible and CPOS-ineligible. Degree Works calculates elective credit to determine whether a student needs elective hours to meet the minimum 124 credit hour requirement. Students or advisors can use the "What-If" feature in the New Degree Works Dashboard to anticipate which courses are eligible or ineligible for CPOS. Remember that Degree Works is calculating how many general electives are remaining for a student based on their Program of Study, completed coursework, and current registration.
NEW 3/10/23
There is not a pre-declaration option. If a student has not declared a curriculum block, any courses they take to meet requirements in that curriculum block will be eligible for CPOS only if they meet another requirement in the student’s program of study. If the course is meeting a CPOS-eligible general elective (which means it is needed to fulfill the 124 credit hours required for a bachelor’s degree), it will be eligible for CPOS.
NEW 3/10/23
No. We are reminding students that at least 12 hours of classes must be CPOS-eligible, if the student would like to receive their full federal financial aid. Students who are exploring and would like to receive their full federal financial aid have a couple options for planning: They could use the exploration courses to meet thematic core requirements, or they could take exploration courses in addition to 12 hours of CPOS-eligible courses.
NEW 3/10/23
In many cases, yes. Students should contact academic.advising@wheaton.edu or make an appointment with Academic Advising to discuss their specific path and desired graduation date. Early planning is encouraged.
NEW 3/10/23
While faculty and staff academic advisors have a role to help answer questions and guide students, students will ultimately be responsible for making sure they are taking courses that apply to their program of study for the receipt of financial aid.
NEW 3/10/23
Students who take a reduced course load will have reduced federal financial aid according to the full-time, three-quarters time, half-time, and less than half-time chart. They will also have a reduced tuition charge.
NEW 3/10/23
Only degree-seeking students in the Graduate School are eligible for federal financial aid, so there is no change for certificate-only or non-degree-seeking students in the Graduate School. None of those students' courses are eligible under CPOS.
NEW 3/10/23
It is possible to remove AP transfer credits that are currently meeting major, minor, concentration, certificate, fellowship program, endorsement, or general elective requirements. It is also possible to swap transfer credits for students who started at Wheaton with more transfer credits than allowable by transfer policy.
NEW 3/29/23
No. Once a requirement is met, including major or minor electives, it will not be replaced by a different course and cannot be moved to enable another course to meet the requirement.
NEW 3/29/23
Most of the time, yes. Once a student has completed all the requirements in the curriculum block, including the minimum number of credits required, additional courses in the major area will be counted as General Electives.
NEW 3/29/23
Yes. In order to maximize the number of general electives students will have after declaring their major, we advise students who are undeclared to take 12 hours of Christ at the Core requirements or courses that will meet curriculum requirements in the major(s), concentration(s), minor(s), certificate(s), endorsement(s), or fellowship programs they are intending to declare and be sure the major, minor, or certificate courses are falling into CPOS-eligible electives.
NEW 3/29/23
Yes. Starting in spring 2023, it is possible for a graduate course that an undergraduate student takes in an Accelerated MA program to also count toward their undergraduate degree. If the graduate course meets program of study requirements in the student’s undergraduate degree, the course will be CPOS-eligible for federal financial aid.
NEW 3/29/23
We are working on the mechanisms that we will use for alerting students who receive federal financial aid about any courses they are registered for that are not CPOS-eligible (that is, not meeting requirements in their program of study) and therefore not eligible for federal aid. Testing is underway for the information to display in the Financial Aid section of Banner Self-Service.
NEW 3/29/23
CPOS is a mechanism by which Wheaton College is able to meet the federal guidelines for disbursement of Financial Aid according to the Title IV regulations. CPOS is software that works with our current student information system (Banner) and our current course audit software (Degree Works) to review records for financial aid eligibility.
NEW 3/29/23
Federal financial aid will be following CPOS eligibility standards.
NEW 3/29/23
No. All forms of institutional aid will be calculated by the number of credit hours for which a student is registered, regardless of whether they are CPOS-eligible or required for a student’s program of study. Other policies for the receipt of federal or non-federal aid are still in effect, such as Satisfactory Academic Progress or limitations on the number of semesters for which some forms of aid are available.
NEW 3/29/23
The student’s federal financial aid will be calculated by the number of credits hours that are CPOS-eligible (or required for a student’s program of study), and the student’s institutional aid will be calculated by the number of credit hours for which the student is registered.
NEW 3/29/23
No. CPOS eligibility will be determined for all students based on their registrations by 4:30 pm on the semester add/drop deadline, which is the end of the second week of the semester.
NEW 4/19/23
We will stop evaluating students’ registrations for CPOS-eligibility after the semester add/drop date. However, if students drop a B-Quad class prior to the B-Quad drop deadline and their enrollment status reduces (such as if they go from full-time to three-quarter-time), their financial aid will be readjusted.
NEW 4/19/23
Every time we evaluate a student’s registrations for CPOS eligibility, we will use the major(s) and other curriculum blocks they have declared in Banner. We will stop evaluating students’ registrations for CPOS-eligibility after the semester add/drop date. Any curricular changes after the add/drop date for the semester will not change a student’s CPOS-eligibility for that semester. Changes in curriculum (majors, minors, certificates, etc.) will impact CPOS eligibility in the following semester.
NEW 4/19/23
No. Once a Departmental Recommendation is in effect, or an elective course in a curricular block (like a major or minor) has been taken, the Departmental Recommendation cannot be reversed or the course removed in order to take another course in its place.
NEW 4/19/23