To assure that your Scholarship and Grant Policy and Procedure Manual remains current, please record this document on your TOPS Bulletin index and retain it with your manual.

Agriscience courses have not been designated as equivalent courses to the core curriculum for TOPS because the Louisiana Board of Regents maintains its position of not recommending such courses as equivalent.

Rules of the Louisiana Student Financial Assistance Commission, (specifically, Louisiana Administrative Code Title 28, Part IV) have been revised to provide that certain courses may satisfy core curriculum course requirements for the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts. Quoted below are section 703.A.5.a.i, ii, and the new section iii, which lists core curriculum equivalent courses for the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts.

"§Chapter 7. Tuition Opportunity Program for Students (TOPS) Opportunity; Performance and Honors Awards

...

§703. Establishing Eligibility
        A.-A.5.a. ii. ...
            5. a. graduate from a BESE-approved, provisionally-approved, or probationally-approved public or nonpublic
Louisiana high school or eligible non-Louisiana high school as defined in §1703.A.3; and
                i. at the time of high school graduation, an applicant must have successfully completed 16.5 units of high school course work constituting a core curriculum as follows:

ii. for purposes of satisfying the requirements of §703.A.5.a.i., above, the following courses shall be considered equivalent to the identified core courses and may be substituted to satisfy corresponding core courses:

iii. for purposes of satisfying the requirements of §703.A.5.a.i., above, in addition to the courses identified in §703.A.5.a.ii. the following courses shall be considered equivalent to the identified core courses and may be substituted to satisfy corresponding core courses for students of the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts:

            or

or
A.5.b.-G.2. ...