hiya aska,
i’m doing my undergrad in A&S and i rely solely on OSAP. i enrolled at U of T in 2010…a brief explanation: took a nose-dive during my 2nd year and failed 2 courses which dropped me below 60% course load, i’m still chugging away thanks to getting registered with Accessibility Services, but it’s slow going. i was on probation for a while, i forget how long but i remember having to write maybe 2 letters about how i’m going to make sure i succeed academically. if i pass everything this semester i will be 1.5 credits short of graduating. my gpa is 2.15ish now. i never found out if i was put on probation because i failed the 2 courses or because my courseload was too low.
this semester is a trainwreck because of reasons. if i fail any courses, will OSAP cut me off? suspend me? how does OSAP look upon late withdrawals and NCR course grades?
thanks for listening to my sob story
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hey there,
sorry for the absurdly late response. aska’s been a bit flooded with questions lately and the catch-up process is a slow one, but we’ll get there eventually. i hope you’ve sought help elsewhere in the meantime, though.
OSAP is always a tricky thing to talk about. it has a million nuances, depending on details that i may or may not know about you. regardless of what i say today, it’s a good rule of thumb to keep in close contact with your registrar’s office whenever you’re dealing with OSAP.
OSAP is not in the business of combing through transcripts and determining academic standing; that’s the university’s job. all that OSAP cares about, basically, is that you are in a full-time course load.
if you are on full-time OSAP and you don’t achieve at least 3.0 credits in the Fall/Winter term (because you failed some courses or LWD’d or whatever), you will be required to begin paying back your OSAP 6 months after the date that OSAP deems you to have dropped to part-time (likely the end of the Fall/Winter session). if you don’t have 6 months between now and the next time you’re in a full-time course load, then you’re in luck. otherwise, you’d have to make payments monthly until the next time that you’re in a full-time course load again.
you will also likely be put on OSAP probation again, in which case you’d have to write another letter explaining why you weren’t able to make satisfactory progress.
however, if you were on OSAP probation last year and you don’t achieve at least 3.0 credits this year, you may be restricted from receiving OSAP for one calendar year (see #19).
again, i’ll reiterate that your college registrar’s office is really the best place to go for help in situations like these. they’re a resource that you’re paying for; you may as well use them for help.
cheers,
aska