The ODU Financial Aid Adjustment Form lets you change the type or amount of aid in your current Old Dominion University award package: reduce a loan, cancel an award for a semester, or update your package after an outside scholarship arrives. The form lives on the Office of Financial Aid’s website and can be submitted online, by mail, or in person at Rollins Hall in Norfolk.
When to Use the Adjustment Form
ODU lists several situations that typically call for an adjustment:
- Your enrollment level changed — you dropped below full-time, or you’ll attend only one semester instead of two.
- Your grade level changed, which shifts your federal loan eligibility limits.
- You received a scholarship, veterans benefit, tuition grant, tuition waiver, or other funding that wasn’t in your original package.
- Your Student Aid Index changed after updated FAFSA data.
- You were reclassified as a Virginia resident for domicile purposes, which affects tuition and your cost of attendance.
One clarification on outside scholarships: no federal law requires you to report them to ODU. The reporting obligation is institutional policy. That said, ODU packages your aid based on everything it knows about, and if your total aid ends up exceeding your cost of attendance, the school will reduce your package once the outside funds appear anyway. Reporting up front avoids a surprise reduction later.
What to Have Ready Before You Open the Form
The form is linked from the Aid Adjustments page on ODU’s financial aid website under the “Financial Aid Adjustment Form” heading. Before you start, gather:
- Your ODU University Identification Number.
- The specific aid type you want to change, named precisely — for example, Federal Direct Subsidized Loan or Federal Direct Unsubsidized Loan.
- The dollar amount of the change.
- The semester the change applies to.
Having these details in front of you keeps the request clean and avoids follow-up questions from the financial aid office.
Decrease To vs. Decrease By
Read the form’s wording carefully. “Decrease To $1,000” sets your total loan at $1,000, no matter what it was before. “Decrease By $1,000” subtracts $1,000 from your current loan balance. Confusing the two can leave you with far more or far less funding than you meant to request. If your current loan is $4,000 and you want to cut it in half, “Decrease To $2,000” and “Decrease By $2,000” happen to produce the same result — but that overlap is a coincidence of the numbers, not a general rule.
Which Loan to Reduce First
If you’re trimming loans, the order matters financially. Federal Direct Subsidized Loans don’t accrue interest while you’re enrolled at least half-time, so keeping those costs you less. Direct Unsubsidized Loans start accruing interest the day they disburse, and that interest capitalizes into your principal over time. Reducing unsubsidized loan amounts before subsidized ones saves money over the life of the debt.
How to Submit the Form
ODU accepts the completed form three ways:
- Online, through the “Upload Financial Aid Documents” link on the financial aid website. This is the fastest route and keeps the form inside ODU’s secure document system.
- By mail, to the Office of Financial Aid, 2002 Rollins Hall, 1 Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529.
- In person at Rollins Hall, Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. The office number is 757-683-3683 if you want to confirm hours first.
The online upload works for most students. Mailing adds transit time. Dropping it off in person makes sense if you’re already on campus and want immediate confirmation.
What Happens After You Submit
Staff verify your request against your current award and federal eligibility rules before updating your account. Processing takes longer around the start of a semester and near disbursement dates, when volume is highest.
Watch Leo Online, ODU’s student self-service portal, for the change to show up in your award status and account balance. If the adjustment leaves a credit on your account because you reduced aid after tuition was already covered, the refund follows ODU’s standard disbursement timeline. If the adjustment drops your aid below what you’ve already been billed, you’ll owe the difference. Check your balance once the change posts.
Summer Aid Uses a Different Form
Changes to summer aid or summer enrollment don’t go on the regular adjustment form. ODU has a separate Summer Aid Adjustment Form, and the deadline to submit it is the last day of summer classes. The summer process runs on its own calendar: for Summer 2026, the award letter deadline is June 26 and the Satisfactory Academic Progress application deadline is June 30. Summer eligibility is evaluated independently of the rest of the academic year, so adjusting your fall or spring package doesn’t carry over.
Professional Judgment Is a Separate Process
The adjustment form handles straightforward changes — reducing a loan, canceling an award, updating a package after new funding arrives. It is not the path for a significant change in your family’s financial circumstances. Job loss, a medical emergency, or divorce calls for a Professional Judgment appeal, which asks a financial aid administrator to recalculate specific data elements used in your Student Aid Index.
Under federal rules, the administrator can adjust cost of attendance components or the values that feed the SAI calculation, but cannot change the formula itself. The adjustment has to be reasonable and tied to your specific circumstances; routine expenses like utility bills or credit card payments don’t qualify. ODU requires you to speak with a financial aid counselor first to determine whether an appeal is warranted, then request the professional judgment form. For the spring semester, the deadline for professional judgment requests is March 20, 2026. Professional judgment decisions are final at the institutional level and cannot be appealed to the Department of Education.
Think Twice About Increasing Aid Right Before Withdrawing
If there’s any chance you’ll withdraw from all your courses, run the numbers before you request more aid. Federal Return of Title IV Funds rules calculate how much aid you earned based on the percentage of the payment period you completed, dividing calendar days attended by total calendar days in the period (excluding scheduled breaks of five or more consecutive days). Withdraw before completing more than 60 percent of the period and you’ve only earned that same percentage of your aid; the rest has to be returned. Pass the 60 percent mark and you’ve earned all of it. Increasing a loan just before you leave can leave you owing money back rather than keeping extra funds.