How your reason for withdrawing from a class affects your VA debt

If you’re using Post-9/11 GI Bill (Chapter 33) benefits and you withdraw from a class or school, you may need to pay us back for any housing payments you’ve received. And your school may need to pay us back for tuition, fees, and the VA portion of any Yellow Ribbon payment paid on your behalf. 

If you’re using Montgomery GI Bill Active Duty (MGIB-AD), Montgomery GI Bill Selected Reserve (MGIB-SR), or Survivors’ and Dependents’ Education Assistance (DEA), you may need to pay us back the benefits we’ve paid directly to you. And your school will likely ask you to pay them back for any debt we charged to them.

If we determine that your reason for withdrawing from a class or school is an acceptable mitigating circumstance, you don’t need to pay us back the full amount. If you don’t submit mitigating circumstances or if we don’t accept them, you’ll owe us the full amount we paid starting from the first day of the term. 

Mitigating circumstances are situations or events beyond your control that cause you to withdraw from (or “drop”) a class or withdraw from a school entirely.

Mitigating circumstances include:

• An illness or death in your immediate family
• An injury or illness you had while you were enrolled
• A change in your conditions of employment that you couldn’t avoid
• A job transfer to a new location while you were enrolled that you couldn’t avoid
• Immediate family or financial demands that you had no control over
• Active military service that you didn’t know about ahead of time
• A sudden end to (or cancellation of) the course you were taking
• A sudden end to child care coverage that you didn’t know about ahead of time

You may tell your School Certifying Official (SCO) about any mitigating circumstances, and either you or your SCO can report them to us.

If you or your SCO doesn’t report mitigating circumstances, you’ll owe the full amount of your debt.

If we don’t receive your reason for withdrawing from a class or from school, we’ll send you a letter asking you to explain to us in writing why you dropped credit hours. The letter will tell you how to submit these mitigating circumstances.

We’ll notify you by mail about whether we accept your mitigating circumstances. If we accept your reason for dropping credit hours, you’ll likely still owe a portion of your debt. If we don’t accept your reason, we’ll explain why and tell you the amount you’ll need to pay us back. And we’ll contact your school directly about repayment of education benefits we paid to your school.

The 6-credit-hour exclusion is a 1-time exception that VA grants the first time you withdraw from a class or from your school. This exclusion lets you drop up to 6 credit hours without needing to show mitigating circumstances. You can keep the benefits you received up to the day you withdrew.  

If you withdraw from a class that’s only 3 credits, we’ll grant the exclusion for those 3 credits and you will have used your 1-time exception. We don’t grant an exclusion more than once per person, even if we have granted an exclusion for fewer than 6 credits. 

If you withdraw from more than 6 credits, we’ll grant the exclusion for 6 credits, and you will have used your 1-time exception. You must provide mitigating circumstances for the remaining credits.