If I Take Two 3-Credit Classes Each Half of the Semester, Am I Still Authorizd the Full Post 9/11 GI Bill Housing Allowance?
Q: Hello, if you take two 3-credit classes for the first half of a semester and two 3-credit classes for the second half of a semester (and your school considers you full-time), but only one of those 4 classes is on campus, do you still get full BAH for both half semesters or only for the one with the on campus class? More so, does VA go by what the school considers full-time or whether you are taking 12 credits worth of classes at once?
A: The VA goes by whether you are taking enough credits at any one-time each semester to be classified as a full-time student by your school. You have to watch out for courses that do not run a full semester because you could end up not having enough credits during part of the semester to warrant you Post 9/11 GI Bill housing allowance eligibility.
For example, if your school considers 12 credits as full-time, you would not get the housing allowance, because at any one-time you are only taking 6 credits. However, if your school consider 6 credits as full-time, then you would qualify for the full housing allowance credit-wise. Make sense?
In other words, the real question is does your school consider 6 credits or 12 to be full-time? It matters, because your housing allowance eligibility is driven off of the number of credits you are taking at any one time – not 12 credits overall throughout the semester.
To answer your second question, let’s assume your school does use 6 credits as their full-time figure. If you are taking two classes online during the first half of the semester and one class online and one on campus the second half of the semester, then you would get the online-only housing allowance rate for the first half of the semester and the full amount for the second half. You only get the full housing allowance rate if you are taking a full credit load and at least one class per semester, creditable to your degree plan, on campus.