I received the following e-mail this afternoon:

EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, YOU ARE ON "CONDITIONAL STATUS" FOR AUTUMN QUARTER 2008. [...] If you are on Conditional Status because you are within 36 credit hours of your maximum time frame, you will remain on Conditional Status until you reach your maximum time frame, at which point your aid eligibility will be cancelled and you will not be eligible for aid for subsequent quarters of enrollment.

After a few unvoiced profanities, I clicked through to the Student Financial Aid website and found out that because I have 268 credit hours, I am close to the maximum 300 hours beyond which I would become ineligible for financial aid. This is a measure intended to prevent students from taking classes indefinitely without graduating, which I understand. Only problem: 100 of my credit hours are from examination credit, and none of them count for either of my two majors. One of my majors also contains at least 40 hours of prerequisites that do not actually count towards graduation. My scholarships were awarded for twelve quarters; I have been enrolled all of nine quarters, so there is no reason to take them away.

I love how my efforts at making the most of my education by taking 15-20 hours per quarter, earning two degrees, and satisfying all the content requirements for teacher licensure before graduation, are rewarded by the threat to take my rightfully earned scholarships away. I also like how the $5000 scholarship I won was not actually awarded to me but deducted from my awards for the other quarters because I am already receiving the maximum amount of aid per year. It's not that I particularly want or need the extra money, but I do wish I had been told that I could not receive any additional money; I might have put the credit towards summer tuition instead. I might have just let it go, but I just wish I had been better informed.

So OSU's chances of getting an alumni donation from me just decreased by half.