[Oasfaa] 2001-2002 OTAG Awards

[Joyner, Shiela]

Good Afternoon,

We plan to start processing 2001-2002 OTAG awards in the next few days, and
we want to advise you regarding a projected OTAG award cutoff date.  

As announced earlier, we received $1.1 million in additional state funding
for the OTAG program.  Based on this increased state funding as well as an
increase in our SLEAP allocation and our assessment of 2000-2001 awarding
history data and the current year database, at this time we are comfortable
with setting a tentative award cutoff date of May 4 for BOTH renewal and
non-renewal applications.

Be reminded that renewals are awarded at any eligible level of EFC while
non-renewals are awarded only if the EFC is 1500 or lower.

We will not have all the information we need to determine a final cutoff
until the majority of awards have been approved based on the May 4 cutoff,
and this year a number of schools have indicated their plans to report to
OTAG to enable awards for their students very late in the summer and in a
number of instances as late as October.  As a result, we do not anticipate
being in a position to announce a final cutoff until much later in the award
year.

Also, we encourage you NOT to anticipate that funds will be available for
new award approvals for the spring 2002 semester.  Spring semester awarding
will occur only if our fall award projections fall short, and there is no
guarantee that funds will be available for these late awards.

If you have questions concerning the OTAG awarding process, please contact
our office locally at (405) 234-4356 or toll free (877) 662-6231 or send
e-mail to reports at otag.org.

***********************
Shiela Joyner, Director
Oklahoma Tuition Aid Grant Program
Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education
P. O.  Box 3020
Oklahoma City, OK 73101-3020
Internet:  sjoyner at otag.org
Voice: (405) 234-4356    Toll Free (877) 662-6231
Fax: (405) 234-4392