Appeal Process

Appeals are only considered for the following reasons:

• Student changes status during the semester (example: dropped below 12 hours during a semester, went from 9 hours to 8 or less, or went from 6 hours to less than 6 hours) or totally withdrew from classes in a semester. Please note that if student is at an attempted hours benchmark and GPA is not higher than the minimum GPA required, we cannot hear an appeal for any reason.

ACCEPTABLE medical or personal reasons for dropping below full time or withdrawing from the university are: major illness of student, illness or death of an immediate family member, fulfilling a religious commitment expected of all students of that faith, EXTREME financial hardship of the student or the student’s immediate family, or other extraordinary circumstances.

Extraordinary circumstances are those that are beyond the student’s control where timely enrollment by the student would create a substantial hardship.These circumstances must be presented with appropriate documentation, i.e., death certificate, hospital invoice, etc.

Please note that the Tennessee Student Assistance Corporation will not allow an appeal based on grades or GPA. The rules, which are summarized above, are very specific about what type of an appeal is allowed.

In the event that the decision to deny the change of status is upheld throughout the appeals process, the student is ineligible to regain the Tennessee Education Lottery Scholarship award or become elgibile for another award.

The appeals panels described on the HOW TO APPEAL page do not have the authority to consider requests for exceptions to the high school grade point average or grade point average evaluations.