New York State Scholarships (TAP)

New York State Grants, Scholarships, and Awards

New York State students may be eligible for a variety of State grant, scholarship and award programs to help pay for college. Most of the NYS scholarships are administered by the Higher Education Services Corporation (HESC).

New York State Grants, Scholarships and Awards include:

• Tuition Assistance Program (TAP)
• NYS Math & Science Teaching Incentive Scholarship
• NYS Scholarships for Academic Excellence
• NYS World Trade Center Memorial Scholarships
• Veterans Tuition Awards (VTA) Please refer to the HESC website for a complete list of NYS programs 

PLEASE NOTE: The only New York State Scholarship available to graduate students is the Veterans Tuition Awards. Graduate students are not currently eligible for TAP.

General Student Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible for NYS scholarships, a student must satisfy several requirements. Initially, students are approved or rejected for an award based on information submitted to HESC on the application. Approval for an award is tentative and is based on the assumption that information on the application is correct and that the student will meet all other required eligibility criteria. Final approval for an award is contingent upon institutional certification of student eligibility.

The following is a summary of student eligibility criteria. It is the student’s responsibility to understand the criteria and take the necessary steps to maintain eligibility. Click on the link for more information about each requirement.

• Be enrolled as a full-time student taking 12 or more credits (applicable toward your degree program) per semester 
• Be a United States citizen or eligible noncitizen
• Be a legal resident of New York State
• Study at an approved postsecondary institution in New York State (NYS)
• Have graduated from high school in the United States, or have earned a GED
• Be matriculated in an approved program of study and be in good academic standing
• Have declared a major no later than within 30 days from end of the add/drop period in the first term of your junior year in an approved four-year program
• Meet good academic standing requirements

Individual scholarships may have additional requirements Please refer to the HESC website for a complete description of each scholarship. 

Full-time Status Requirement

HESC Regulatory Explanation – TAP Coach:

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• Fulltime Study
• Minimum Couse Load
• Repeated Course

In order to receive most NYS scholarships, you must be a full-time student. The Regulations of the Commissioner of Education define full-time and part-time study for financial aid purposes. To be a full-time student, you must enroll for at least 12 semester hours in a semester of not less than 15 weeks, including examination periods and the courses must satisfy requirements for the program in which you are matriculated.

Courses that are not required for your program, cannot be considered as required electives and cannot count toward full-time study.  If you want to take courses that are not required for your program and cannot be included as required elective courses, such courses must be taken in addition to the minimum full-time 12 semester-hour course load to be eligible for full-time student financial aid.  This is also important when determining whether you have maintained good academic standing, as only courses that apply to your program of study —as a general education requirement(Core), a major requirement, or a required general elective -- may be considered.

If you take an unneeded elective course as part of the 12 credits required to be full time, you are not eligible for a NYS scholarship.  You may, however, enroll in an elective course if you take more than 12 credits and carry a 15-credit course load.

The only scholarship that permits part-time study is the Veterans Tuition Award.  Courses still have to program eligible.

Repeated Courses

You may repeat a course and have the course count as part of the minimum full-time course load for financial aid purposes if you did not previously earn credit for the course.  If you receive an F or a W in a course, you do not earn credit for the course. Therefore, you may repeat courses in which you earned F or W grades and have them count towards full-time or part-time study requirements.

There are certain other circumstances when you may repeat a course and have it count as part of the minimum course load:

1. The grade earned is passing at the college but not considered passing in a particular curriculum.  For example, you receive a D in an education course; D is a passing grade; however, any grade lower than a C+ in an education course is considered a failing grade.  Thus, the education course in which you earned the D may be repeated as part of the minimum full-time or part-time course load.
2. The course can be repeated and credit earned each time, such as certain physical education or music courses.

If you earned a passing grade (D or higher)  in a course but want to repeat the course in an effort to improve your grade and overall grade point average, the repeated course may not be counted as part of the minimum course load since you already earned credit for the course. Therefore, repeating a course in which you previously received a passing grade, could make you ineligilbe for NYS scholarships if you do not have at least 12 other applicable credits.

In addition, with regard to the effect on full-time and part-time status, a repeated course in which you earned a passing grade may not be used to meet the pursuit of program requirement (completing a certain percentage of the minimum full-time or part-time course load in each term an award is received) for maintaining good academic standing.  In other words, a course that the college does not require you to repeat in order for you to earn credit toward a degree cannot be considered in determining whether you have satisfied the pursuit requirement for a New York State award. 

US Citizen Requirement

HESC Regulatory Explanation – TAP Coach:

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• Citizenship

All New York State student aid programs have citizenship requirements.  New York State uses the same criteria used for federal student aid programs to determine eligibility.  To be eligible, you must be one of the following categories:

• United States citizen (includes the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands) or U.S. national (includes American Samoa and Swain’s Island);
• Permanent U.S. resident with a Form I-151 (Alien Registration Receipt Card) or Form I-551 (Permanent Resident Card), without conditions;
• Holder of a Form I-94 (Arrival/Departure Record) showing one of the following designations: “Refugee,” “Asylum Granted,” “Indefinite Parole,” and/or “Humanitarian Parole, Cuban-Haitian Entrant, Status Pending,” “Conditional Entrant (valid if issued before April 1, 1980);
• Citizen of the Freely Associated States, the Pacific Islands of Palau, the Marshall Islands, or the Federated States of Micronesia; or
• Participant in a suspension of deportation case pending before Congress.

Students in the United States on an F1 or F2 visa only or on a J1 or J2 Exchange visa only are not eligible.

NYS Residency Requirement

HESC Regulatory Explanation – TAP Coach:

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• Residency

Eligibility for NYS-sponsored scholarships and awards is limited to students who meet New York State residency requirements.

To satisfy this requirement, students must be a legal resident of New York State.  Legal residence means that the student currently resides in New York State and intends to make the state his/her permanent home.  The act of living within the state's boundaries is, in itself, an insufficient demonstration of residency.

If a student is financially dependent upon his/her parents, HESC presumes the student's legal residence to be that of the parents.  If the parents are separated or divorced, HESC presumes the legal residence to be that of the parent who has been awarded custody (or who would have been awarded custody it the student were a minor). If the parents reside out of state, HESC presumes that the student resides out of state.

Marist College presumes that the student resides out of state if the student's billing and permanent addresses on file list a state other than New York.

High School Graduation Requirement

Helpful HESC Link - TAP Coach:

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• High School Diploma
• Home Schooling

For students seeking their first New York State financial aid award in academic year 2006-2007 and thereafter, Education Law requires you to have a high school diploma from a recognized school providing secondary education within the United States or to have a GED/high school equivalency diploma.

If you first received NYS financial aid in academic year 1996-1997 through 2005-2006, you must have a high school transcript confirming graduation or have a GED/high school equivalency diploma on file at Marist College.  It is the student's responsibility to submit a final, official high school transcript confirming graduation or a GED at the time of admission.  Students who fail to submit the official high school transcript or GED at the time of admission will not be certified for (will not receive) their award or scholarship until the transcript has been submitted to the TAP Certifying Officer in the Office of the Registrar.

Home Schooled Students

If you have been home schooled, you must meet the same criteria — high school diploma, or high school equivalency diploma, -- to be eligible for New York State student financial aid as do those students who attend public high schools.  However, home schooled students do not receive a high school diploma that is acceptable for financial aid purposes as only public and registered non-public schools in New York State are permitted by Education Law to award diplomas.

Therefore, if you were home schooled, you must demonstrate your eligibility for financial aid in one of the following ways:

• Obtain a letter from local school district officials confirming that you have received an education “substantially equivalent” to instruction given to students graduating high school in the public schools; or
• Take and pass the GED test.

Obtain additional information on home schooling from the New York State Education Department.

PLEASE NOTE:  New York State does not recognize online high schools.  Students who attended online high schools require the same documentation as that required of home-schooled students.

Foreign High School Credentials

In 2006, the New York State Legislature amended the Education Law pertaining to eligibility for State student financial aid.  The amendment affects students who received their first financial aid award in academic year 2006-2007 and thereafter.  To be eligible for State student financial aid, you now must have a certificate of graduation from a high school in the United States or the equivalent of such certificate (for example, a GED or high school equivalency diploma).  If you graduated from a high school in another country, your high school diploma or academic transcript is no longer acceptable.

Good Academic Standing Requirements

HESC Regulatory Explanation – TAP Coach:

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• Good Academic Standing
• C Average Requirement
• Failure to Make Progress
• Failure to Pursue
• Loss of Good Academic Standing
• Program Pursuit
• Satisfactory Academic Progress

To receive New York State (NYS)-sponsored grants or scholarships, the student must be in good academic standing. For NYS financial aid purposes, good academic standing consists of two components:

1. Pursuit of Program--a requirement that a student receive a passing or failing grade (A-F letter grade) in a certain percentage of courses each term, depending on the number of state awards the student has received. The percentage is determined according to the following schedule:

Number of   payment	Must receive a grade (A-F) for
1, 2	50% of minimum full-time requirement (six credit hours)
3, 4	75% (nine credit hours)
5 or more	100% (12 credit hours)

Students should carefully consider withdrawing from courses as this may impact the student's eligibility under the Pursuit of Program requirement.   For example, if the student has received 3 payments (which requires the completion of at least 9 credits), is enrolled in 12 credits but decides to withraw from 4 credits - the student will not be eligible for the next scholarship payment because the student would only be completing 8 credits.

2. Satisfactory Academic Progress--a requirement that students accumulate a specified number of credits and achieve a specified cumulative grade point average each term, depending on the number of state award payments students have received. For students who received their first state award prior to and including academic year 2005-06, institutions are required to use a standard of satisfactory academic progress, approved by the New York State Commissioner of Education, to determine academic progress. NOTE: After students have received the equivalent of four semester payments of any state award, students must maintain a GPA of at least 2.0 on a 4.0 scale. For students who received their first award in the academic year 2006-07 and thereafter, institutions must use the satisfactory academic progress standards in Education Law section 665.

TAP PROGRESS CHART – BACCALAUREATE PROGRAMS

	6	12	18	24	30	36	42	48	54	60
Before being certified for this payment	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	9th**	10th**
A student must have accrued at least this many credits	0	6	15	27	39	51	66	81	96	111
With at least this grade-point average	0	1.5	1.8	1.8	2.0	2.0	2.0	2.0	2.0	2.0