Payment Plan

About the Plan

The payment plan allows students and families to spread the balance due across three payments over the course of a term. The payment plan is integrated with the student account.

The installment amounts are recalculated nightly to reflect new charges, new payments, and changes in financial aid. Students will consistently have an accurate understanding of what is owed and when payment is due.

The Campus Billing team will gladly walk students through their account or your student’s account to understand how a given installment is calculated based on the transactions in the student account.

Enrollment

There is a $25 enrollment fee to enroll in a payment plan for each term.  This fee is due at the time of enrollment.

When beginning the enrollment process, there will be due dates of the three installments.  The exact dates vary by college and program.  For the most part, the first installment is due later in the month of the original bill due date.  The subsequent installments are due monthly.  All term charges are to be paid by the end of the term in order to continue to qualify for the next term’s payment plan.

Undergraduate Students

• You will see your plan listed when you click on the “Payment Plans” tab in D-Pay.
  
  

Graduate and Professional School Students

• Please contact Campus Billing for enrollment instructions. The Campus Billing team will make your plan available to you in D-Pay. You will then follow the instructions in our step-by-step guide.
  
  

International Students

• If you are an undergraduate student and have a US-based checking/savings account, you may enroll in your plan by following the instructions in our step-by-step guide. If you are an undergraduate and do not have a US-based checking/savings account, please contact the Campus Billing team for enrollment instructions. If you are graduate student, please contact the Campus Billing team for enrollment instructions.  

Payments and Charges

Once enrolled in a plan, you and your family may make payments to the plan by clicking on the “Make a Payment” button or the “Payments” tab in D-Pay.  You will see the installment amounts and due dates.  You have the option of scheduling all of the payments or scheduling individual payments.  Please note that some of the installment due dates may be on weekend days.  If you have scheduled a future payment, you have the opportunity of editing that scheduled payment.

You may make partial payments at any time.  Each payment you make will reduce the next due installment amount.

In order to preserve the (more or less) equal installment payments, financial aid and changes to financial aid are distributed proportionally.  Additional aid posted to the account is distributed equally across all remaining installments (rather than paying off or down the next installment).  The same is true of new charges.  The new charges are distributed equally across all remaining installments (rather than raising the amount of the next installment due). 

Recalculation

The payment plans are recalculated nightly.  This means that the installment amounts may change as the student account balance changes (due to new charges, new payments, reversed charges, reversed payments, financial aid changes, and so on).  The tight integration between D-Pay and the student account enables you and your family to always know exactly what you owe and when it is due.  The D-Pay system will send E-mail notices when the installment amounts go up.  Recalculation will occur up to 14 days before an installment is due.  The pause in recalculation around installment due dates ensures that you can be confident of the installment amount due, regardless of changes in the student account at that time.  The Student Financial Services team will gladly walk you through your account or your student’s account so that you understand how a given installment is calculated based on the transactions in the student account.

The recalculation process also ensures that every charge and every payment will be included in the term’s plan.  This will ensure that you and your family should never be over or under in terms of your payments by the close of the term.

While the goal is to maintain equal installments over the term, your installments may not be equal depending on the transactions occurring on your or your student’s account.  The Student Financial Services team will gladly explain the how the plan is working in your particular case.

Frequently Asked Questions:  Payment Plans

I’m expecting an outside scholarship and I’d like to enroll in payment plan.  Can my balance due/installment payments reflect this pending scholarship?

Yes.  Your outside scholarship needs to be reported to the Financial Aid Office.  Contact Campus Billing to let us know that you would like to enroll in a payment plan and provide the name of the scholarship and the amount.  Your student account will be updated to reflect the pending scholarship amount.  This will have the effect of lowering your installment payments to the amount that they would be if the college had already received the scholarship amount and applied it to your or your student’s account.

 How does a “down payment” affect the installment payments?

A down payment is optional.  A down payment reduces the overall amount due and has the effect of lowering the amount of the subsequent installments.

Making a down payment is a way of making the three-payment plan into a four-payment plan.

 May I make partial payments or pay more than the installment amount due?

Yes.   Partial payments are applied to the next installment amount. Payments greater than the next installment due are applied to the future installments. You will see installment information by clicking on the “Payment Plan” tab in D-Pay. Please note that you will no longer be in the payment plan when you have paid all of your installments. Subsequent activity on the student account will not re-open prepaid installments.

 My parents are divorced and both make payments to my student account.  May each have a payment plan?

No.  The system only permits one payment plan per student account.  If one parent/guardian pays a set amount, that person could make the first payment. This would lower the overall balance before the second parent/guardian enrolls in the payment plan. The other option would be to do the exact reverse.  However, in that case, the parent/guardian signing up would be committing to paying the entire balance and would be waiting for the other parent/guardian to make a payment. And when that happens, the payment will pay the installments sequentially (and not proportionally), potentially leaving the parent/guardian in the plan with uneven installment payments. 

 What charges are “Not Included in Plan” (as displayed in D-Pay)?

The only charges not included in the plan are charges from prior terms. When you or your family makes a payment, it is generally applied to the oldest charge on the student account. It may appear that your payment is lowering your next installment.  However, it may first pay older charges not included in the current term’s plan. The nightly recalculation process will adjust the installments accordingly. 

Why are my installments not roughly equal?

At the time you enroll in the plan, your amounts should be roughly equal, with possibly some variation in the cents.  After enrollment, your installment amounts might change as the student account changes.  Say you make your first installment payment.  After this, a $300 charge gets posted to the student account.  This new charge will be split over the remaining two installments.  This is an example where the installments might not all be roughly equal. 

I will be on leave for the next term.  May I continue to pay for the next term I will be enrolled?

If you and your family would like to continue to make payments toward future account balances, you may do so by simply making payments in D-Pay.  There is no charge for making these payments.  Keep in mind, however, that these pre-payments may be requested as refunds.

Enrollment in a payment plan is only for a specific term, the next term in your college or program.  In other words, you may not be enrolled in a payment plan in a term in which you are not enrolled as a student.