Receiving Your Award Notification

Official award notifications are sent each week. Beginning in April (for first-time freshmen) and mid-May (for returning WKU students), awards are made and sent for the pending academic year. All notifications are sent to students' WKU email accounts. If, for some reason, this account address is invalid, email notifications are sent to the email account a student has listed on his/her FAFSA. If no email address is available or valid, a paper award notification is mailed to the student.

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Accepting Your Awards

 

Review your Award Notification carefully. Most aid is awarded based on full-time enrollment. Changes to enrollment may affect financial aid eligibility.  

To receive aid, students must accept or decline their awards through TopNet, per the instructions below:

• Go to TopNet.wku.edu
• Enter WKU ID (or NetID) AND Password
• Select Financial Aid link, then Select Award
• Select Award for Aid Year, then Select Aid Year
  • Select the year you wish to accept/decline (for example, 2022-2023)
• Select either Accept Full Amount of All Awards OR choose a specific lesser amount

A video on how to accept your award on TopNet can be found below:

If you need to make changes to accepted or declined financial aid, you may email us at fa.help@wku.edu. Be sure to include your Student ID or social security number in your email, so we can locate your account.

Remember: Students will receive only one award notice. Any changes to a student's offered or accepted financial aid (increases, decreases, additions, or deletions) will be posted to the student's account information on TopNet. We strongly urge all students to periodically check their TopNet account for any changes.

You may access TopNet by going to WKU's home page at www.wku.edu. Next, select "Students" and choose "TopNet." On TopNet's website, follow the online instructions for either creating a new account or accessing an existing account.

 ** Pell Grants, CAP Grants, and KEES Scholarships will automatically be accepted for you. These cannot be accepted online.** 

Please Note: Students will need to sign an authorization statement if they wish to use financial aid to pay other charges on their account such as meal plans, housing charges, etc. The Authorization statement link is located in TopNet. Just as with accepting awards, go to TopNet.wku.edu, select Financial Aid Link, select Award, and then Authorization Statement.

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Award Information

The videos below contain information about Federal and State financial aid programs.

 *Note: The maximum amount a student can borrow as an Undergraduate is $57,500 (of which only $23,000 can be subsidized). Graduate students can borrow up to $138,500. Students are strongly encouraged to keep up with their loan balance by logging into their account at www.studentaid.gov after each semester.

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Other Resources and Payment Plans

 

Parent Plus Loan

Parents interested in applying for a loan to help cover expenses can go to studentaid.gov to apply for this credit-based loan. 

If a parent applies for this loan and is not approved, the student will automatically have his/her unsubsidized loan increased. Only the PARENT, not the student, can apply for this loan. 

A video that discusses Parent PLUS Loans can be found below:

Additional Websites

Private Loans: https://choice.fastproducts.org/FastChoice/home/200200

For information on payment plans, please visit https://www.wku.edu/bursar/payment_plans.php

For information on BankMobile, please visit https://www.wku.edu/bursar/refund_service.php 

 

Questions?  Contact us at fa.help@wku.edu

 

Student Financial Assistance

317 Potter Hall
Western Kentucky University
1906 College Heights Blvd. #11018
Bowling Green, KY 42101-1018

Phone: 270-745-2755

Fax: 270-745-6586

Email: fa.help@wku.edu