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.

Schools will begin submitting end of the academic year records for 2003 beginning in May. We want to remind schools to review TOPS Bulletins T2002-13 and T2002-14 for policies and procedures that should be in place at your institution to accurately report the data necessary for LOSFA to calculate students' cumulative grade point averages for TOPS' purposes.

Important Reminders:

•   Hours attempted for TOPS purposes should not include withdrawn (W) hours.
•   Courses completed with a grade of "P" are reported only as hours earned, not hours attempted.
•   Louisiana Public Universities should send records on all students. LAICU Institutions are requested to submit records on all Louisiana residents. LTC campuses may send records on TOPS recipients only.
•   If a student is enrolled at two separate institutions (dually enrolled), they should be coded "DU" by the home institution, and academic information should be submitted by both schools, individually. If each school bills separately, and the student was coded at "DB", it is not necessary to change the code to "DU". "DU", rather than "DB", should be used by schools with cross enrollment agreements and only one school will receive payment. The purpose of a "DU" code is to ensure that the student is not reviewed for hours until all academic information is received from multiple schools. The "DB" code also insures this and, additionally, allows payment to multiple schools.
•   Appropriate quality points should be reported for hours attempted that are passed. Submission of hours attempted without reporting corresponding quality points is the same as submitting a course grade of "F".
•   Eligible Part Time (EPT) students should be identified and coded prior to the end of the term/semester.
•   Please submit prior semester grades, grade corrections and completion of incomplete hours as soon as possible, because processing cannot be done without complete grade reports.
•   Please remind students that they may access eligibility information at www.osfa.state.la.us, click TOPS Portal.

If you have additional questions regarding the processing of academic information for your students, please contact John Bell, Scholarship/Grant Manager at jbell@osfa.state.la.us.