Fall 2020 Semester FAQs
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Student Registration & Financial Services will continue to update this page with new information about billing, financial aid, and other related topics for the Fall 2020 semester. For other questions, visit Penn's Fall Semester Planning website.
For the latest information about Penn's revised fall semester plans, including undergraduate academic services, housing, and student services, please visit the Fall Planning FAQ, which will continue to be updated.
Learn more about the timeline for your fall semester bill, including new information based on the University's latest fall decisions.
On August 11, Penn announced that it would roll back the 3.9% increase in fall undergraduate tuition and reduce the fall general fee by 10% from the 19-20 posted rate.
Updated fall charges are:
Tuition: $25,578 ($1,005 credit)
General Fee: $2,311 ($366 credit)
Clinical Fee: $315
Technology Fee: $446
Because many families have already paid their fall bill, we are processing these adjustments by adding credits to each student account. We will begin to make adjustments to your student account within the next two weeks. Any adjustments will be visible in Penn.Pay as soon as they are processed. If this credit results in an overpayment, you will receive a refund payment based on your preferred refund delivery method in Penn.Pay. We will begin generating refunds the week of August 24 and continue to generate them weekly after that.
The fall bill is due on August 30, 2020. This is one month later than usual.
If you missed the deadline to enroll in the Fall 2020 Penn Payment Plan, SRFS is offering a four-month payment plan option. You must enroll in Penn.Pay by August 14 and your first payment will withdraw automatically on August 15.
You can read full descriptions of what is included in both the general fee and the technology fee on our Undergraduate Tuition and Fees page.
The Student Health Service has prepared an FAQ addressing the clinical fee, health insurance requirements, and several other topics. You can find it on the SHS website.
Students learning remotely who have health insurance at home can submit a waiver to satisfy Penn’s health insurance requirement for 2020-2021.
Learn about how any changes to your living and learning situation for the fall semester will impact your cost of attendance and financial aid eligibility.
We calculate your financial need based on a relatively simple math formula:
Cost of Attendance – Expected Family Contribution = Demonstrated Financial Need
Your Expected Family Contribution holds constant unless your family reports significant changes to your financial situation. If your Cost of Attendance increases or decreases, your demonstrated financial need changes proportionally to reflect your changing expenses.
Financial aid will not be reduced to account for tuition and fee reductions.
Financial aid will be adjusted to account for the removal of housing and dining charges. Students who had planned to live on-campus will be repackaged based on the Living at Home cost of attendance on the SRFS website.
The cost of attendance for students living at home with family includes allowances for food and personal expenses that are equivalent to off-campus rates. Because these students are living with family, their cost of attendance does not include an allowance for housing. Students living with their families will have a reduced cost of attendance, which will impact their demonstrated financial need.
Any student who is able to live with family and learn remotely is encouraged to do so at this time in light of public health guidance. Any students who do live off-campus for the fall semester will still be expected to follow the public health guidelines put forth in the Student Campus Compact.
Penn will provide financial aid to students who have signed a lease and pay rent in off-campus housing based on the off-campus cost of attendance published on the SRFS website. This cost of attendance accounts for nine months of off-campus living expenses and does not include funding for a security deposit or upfront first/last-month rent payments.
If your financial aid credits for the fall semester are greater than your billed expenses, you will receive the remainder of your financial aid as a student account refund that you can use in combination with your Expected Family Contribution and any work-study earnings to cover your living and personal expenses for the semester.
First-year financial aid recipients who were initially scheduled to live on-campus are automatically being repackaged based on the Living At Home cost of attendance posted on the SRFS website. First-year students are not eligible to receive financial aid to live off-campus.
Sophomores, juniors, and seniors who have signed a lease to live off-campus must update their Learning From Address in Penn InTouch as soon as possible to reflect where they will live for the fall semester. We may need to contact you to request additional documentation, such as a lease or sublet agreement, as we are required to verify changes to your living situation from your initial financial aid application. After any necessary verification, we will update your cost of attendance if needed later this month.
Students eligible for student account refunds can receive them via direct deposit at most 10 days prior to the start of the fall semester, assuming you have fully completed your financial aid application and received your award notice. Learn more about Student Account Refunds on the SRFS website.
Penn will continue to package work-study awards as part of financial aid packages, and departments will continue to be encouraged to offer work opportunities to students during the fall semester. We anticipate many work opportunities will remain remote.
As always, students also have the option to replace their work-study award with either a federal or private alternative loan. Contact a financial aid representative at sfsmail@pobox.upenn.edu to discuss this option.
Students living with their families and learning remotely for the entire semester should plan to use the funding in their financial aid package allocated for Personal Expenses to cover Internet costs as needed.
All students whose packages include a summer savings expectation will instead see an additional COVID-19 Summer Savings Grant included in their financial aid package for 2020-2021. The amount of the grant will be split evenly between the fall and spring semesters.
The standard summer savings expectation amount is $3,000 for first-year students and $3,200 for sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Starting in 2018, Penn fully replaced the summer savings expectation with grant funding for highly aided first-years and sophomores and has always applied a reduced $1,800 summer savings expectation to highly aided juniors and seniors, translating to more grant funding in their initial package.
