Concept: Financial Aid Class Standings

As an academic period progresses, Workday uses different sets of units to calculate class standings for Financial Aid.

When a student's reporting record changes, Workday excludes all units earned toward the previous reporting record from the new reporting record. Any units previously earned toward the new reporting record now count toward class standings.

To calculate class standing by academic period, Workday evaluates:

The number of active financial aid period records on the student's attendance plan.
Whether the student's program of study is in an
In Progress
or
Pending Completion
status from the standard start date to the standard end date of the academic period.
Which class standing value the number of periods correlates to, according to the class standing policy.

When calculating period-based class standing, Workday considers:

All the completed academic periods that fall between the start date of the academic record and the standard start date of the current financial aid period record.
Nonstandard academic periods, when you configure the class standing policy to include nonstandard academic period types.

Workday only considers the class standing override for the academic periods of the current academic record, and disregards overrides for the previous academic record.

When registration, grading, internal articulation, or transfer credit events occur, Workday recalculates class standings for future academic periods. For current or past periods, Workday doesn't recalculate class standings.

Workday doesn't sync overrides for Student Records class standings and Financial Aid class standings. Overriding a Student Records class standing doesn't automatically update the Financial Aid class standing, and the other way around. You can use the

Compare Records and Financial Aid Class Standings

report to identify class standings that are out of sync and bring them back into sync.

Workday stores federal student aid (FSA) grade levels on attendance plans based on what you configure on the

Maintain Class Standing Policy

task. FSA grade levels determine a student's eligibility to receive federal loans. For students with a class standing that maps to an FSA grade level of

1st year (Freshman)

, Workday automatically calculates whether they've attended college before or not. To be calculated as having attended college before, the student must have:

Any internal or external articulations with a status of
Complete
or
Graded
.
Any external articulations with an educational type of
Postsecondary
.

Workday considers applicants as having attended college before if they have at least 1 unit of preliminary transfer credit.

You can configure class standings to map directly to

1st, Year Never Attended College Before

and

1st Year, Attended College Before

FSA grade levels instead of having Workday calculate it for you. You might need to do this when you award internal scholarships differently for different types of first years.

Once Workday calculates a first-year grade level for a student, it remains the same until they reach the next grade level. Example: A freshman with a

1st, Year Never Attended College Before

grade level remains that way until they reach the

2nd year (Sophomore)

grade level. They won't change to

1st Year, Attended College Before

, even when they earn units after their first academic period.

When a student has multiple grade levels within an award year, Workday reports the grade level from the first academic period to Common Origination and Disbursement (COD).

Ensure you lock awards for the award year 2026-2027 so that Workday’s automatic packaging job does not remove them from the package. To lock student awards in bulk, you can use the

Mass Operation Management

task. To lock student awards individually, on the

Total Financial Assistance

tab for the student, click

View/Edit

>

Edit/Simulate

, select the check boxes in the

Lock

column, and click

OK

.

If you don’t want to lock awards, you could skip configuring the class standing policy and only edit the class standing overrides until Workday’s awarding logic is able to uptake the new grade levels from the policy.

After you lock awards, to ensure that COD doesn’t reject your awards with edit 996, update the grade levels for award years 2026-2027 and later on these tasks:

Maintain Class Standing Policy
Edit Class Standing Overrides

When the nightly

Refresh Attendance Plan

job runs, Workday automatically assigns these 6 grade levels for award years 2026-2027 and later based on a student’s active and previous programs of study:

Graduate Never Professional
Graduate was Professional
Professional Never Graduate
Professional was Graduate
Graduate Concurrent Enrollment
Professional Concurrent Enrollment

This automatic assigning of the 6 grade levels depends on whether you have assigned Graduate or Professional values on the class standing policy.

You can override the 6 new grade levels for award years 2026-2027 and later on the

Edit Class Standing Overrides

task, in the

Grade Level (Overridden)

column.

You can also use these web services to bulk update students to the 6 grade levels mentioned above:

Put Class Standing Policy
Import Class Standing Overrides for Financial Aid Period Records

You can use:

The
Overridden Financial Aid Grade Level in College
report field to view a student’s overridden financial aid grade level that you have configured for the period record.
The
Processing Financial Aid Grade Level in College
report field to view a student’s overridden or Workday-calculated financial aid grade level.
The
Financial Aid Grade Level in College (Workday Defined)
report field to view a student’s Workday-calculated federal student aid grade level based on the class standing policy that is effective for the financial aid period record.

All of the above report fields are on the Financial Aid Period Record business object (secured to the

Set Up: Financial Aid Rule Sets and Policies

domain).