For students taking summer courses, financial aid is a crucial consideration, but it can be less straightforward than during the academic year.

In order to apply for summer term financial aid, students enrolled in summer courses must complete a few steps. 

According to the Office of Financial Aid’s website, first, students are required to have filed the 2026-2027 Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Once they are given an aid offer for the 2026-2027 school year, they can go into the financial aid self-service portal and click the button that allows them to add the summer term to their enrollment status. 

One key aspect of summer term courses is that all students pay the Oregon Resident tuition rate, regardless of what state or country they are residents of. Therefore, taking summer courses can be a cheaper option for those looking to get ahead in their degree.

Typically, financial aid is divided into three disbursements for fall, winter and spring terms, so adding a summer term means that a student’s aid will be divided by four instead. 

According to Director of Financial Aid Keith Raab, adding a summer term to your enrollment status allows for Pell Grant and Federal Student Loan redistribution. While more funds can be provided to students who receive the Pell Grant, no additional funds can be given for federal loans. Instead, the maximum loan amount you were provided gets redistributed across four terms instead of three.

Summer term 2026 is also the beginning of some changes to financial aid.

Among those is that in order to take out the full per-term federal loan amount, students must be enrolled in 12 credits, which constitutes being a full-time student. Therefore, if a student took six credits in a given term, they would only be eligible to take out half of the provided loan amount for that term.

Raab encourages those with questions to get in contact with the Office of Financial Aid. 

“We’d love to walk through (financial aid) with (students) so that they don’t have any surprises,” he said.