To assure that your Scholarship and Grant Program Rules remain current, please record this document on your TOPS Bulletin index and retain it with your manual.

Due to the large number of electronic files being rejected during processing, the following procedures are emphasized to ensure that the electronic records/files being transmitted to LOSFA and that are described herein can be processed promptly upon receipt.

Please review this information with your IT and other appropriate administrative staffs.

•   Incomplete Grades – (Reference TOPS Bulletin T2002-13 dated 8/26/02)   Schools will report the total number of hours for which a student receives an Incomplete or "I" grade in a separate field, described as the "Incomplete Hours" field, and enter the semester or term in which those hours are recorded. This will enable LOSFA to notify the student that their TOPS renewal will be pending until all "I" grades are completed. Once "I" grades are converted to a permanent grade, schools should submit corrected grade reports electronically through the TOPS Web Portal or FTP process. This can be done via batch or individual entry. Corrections to Incomplete grades, as well as any other grade corrections, should be submitted timely to ensure students' eligibility is correctly determined. We recommend that your school establish procedures to ensure that all grade corrections made to students' transcripts automatically trigger a correction file transmission to LOSFA. Schools must submit hours attempted for every course in which a grade of A, B, C, D, or F is earned. You should not include “I” grades in hours attempted. This will result in the hours for the “I” grade being double counted when we attempt to assess if a pending status is warranted.

•   Addition of Program Type to Institutional Payment Request File (Reference TOPS Bulletin T2004-2 dated 4/16/04)   Beginning with the first semester of academic year 2004-05 (1S/IT2005), the Institutional Payment Request (IPR) file will be expanded by adding six (6) fields. The revised IPR file layout should have been implemented by institutions beginning September 3, 2004. All payment requests submitted after that date, to include payments requested for prior academic years, must be in the revised file format. This field should contain an “A” if the student is enrolled in an Academic Program of Study at a 2 or 4-year public or LAICU institution, or a “T” if the student is enrolled in a Technical (Non-Academic) Program of Study.

•   Timely Submission of Files   LOSFA now has the capability to review IPR and AIR files prior to loading them to the processing system for the weekly job run (each Thursday). To provide adequate time to review and assess the accuracy of these records, files must be received by Wednesday at 3:00 p.m. Records received after this time will not be reviewed and processed until the following week. We encourage schools to make submissions on Thursdays, Fridays and Mondays to allow ample time for files to be reviewed and returned for corrections, if necessary. This schedule will allow corrected files to be submitted before the Wednesday deadline. Schools having automated systems that do not conform to this deadline should adjust their programs accordingly.

•   Academic Standing Field – (reference TOPS Bulletin T2002-13 dated 8/26/02)   This field must reflect the enrollment status of the student when submitted in the AIR and the special student population code when submitted in the IPR (if no Special Student Code is applicable, code should be “00”).

•   Pass/Fail and Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory grading – (reference TOPS Bulletin T2002-13 dated 8/26/02)   Do not report grades of “P”, “S”, or “W” in Hours Attempted (HRSATTMPT) in the AIR files. These grades carry no quality points and will misrepresent the student’s grade point average when calculated by our system. If your institution treats “NC” or “U” grades as failing grades, they should be reported as Hours Attempted. If these grades are not computed on your campus in the student’s grade point average, they should not be reported as Hours Attempted.
  

Questions or comments regarding the above information may be referred to LOSFA’s TOPS Program Administrator John Bell by e-mail at jbell@osfa.state.la.us or by phone at (800) 259-5626, Ext. 1012.