The Louisiana Office of Student Financial Assistance is looking to help students maintain their Taylor Opportunity Program for Students scholarships with a more casual form of communication. 
LOSFA will begin sending text message reminders to freshmen regarding their TOPS scholarship status by the end of this semester.
TOPS is a state scholarship for Louisiana residents. The scholarship began in 1989, becoming the first state-funded, merit-based college tuition program in the country, according to the TOPS website.
According to LOSFA year-end data, about 48,273 students received the scholarship during the 2013-2014 school year. The scholarship covers more than half of an in-state University student’s full-time tuition. 
Fashion merchandising senior Tori Bolds said she received TOPS for two years before losing it her junior year after she was not informed she could retroactively drop her classes. 
A retroactive drop is when a student can drop a class because of mental illness or other serious health complications. 
“I basically lost TOPS due to depression, and it caused my grades to lack,” Bolds said. “If I knew about the retroactive drop, I might still have my TOPS.”
LOSFA executive director Sujuan Boutté said the new text messages’ purpose is meeting students on their own domain. Students are on their phones more than they check emails, she said. 
“Students work four years to get an award as generous as TOPS and lose the award due to a lack of information,” Boutté said. 
The text messages will include information like how many hours students need, grade point average and advice on what they should do if they don’t receive the required grades. 
Incoming freshman must have 19 core credits, a 2.5 or higher GPA and an ACT score of 20 to receive TOPS.
Communication disorders freshman Maya Breaux said she wasn’t aware of the requirements to keep her TOPS scholarship after freshman year. 
“I think the texts will be helpful because students need to be supplied with that information,” Breaux said. “This scholarship is too important to lose because it’s a big help to my parents paying tuition.”
To maintain TOPS, freshmen must maintain a 2.3 GPA at the end of their first academic year, which is 24-46 hours of earned credit. Sophomores and juniors must maintain a 2.5 GPA at the end of those academic years, which begins at 48 academic credits or more.
Boutté said the more gift aid a student receives, the less loan burden there is at the time of graduation. She said the idea for the text messages originated to get students accurate information in a timely manner and help them maintain the award.
Bolds lost TOPS this semester and had to take out loans to pay tuition. Bolds said she wasn’t aware she even lost the scholarship.
“You don’t have help unless you go seek help,” Bolds said. “I feel like nobody helped me until I coincidentally talked to someone in the University College Center for Freshman Year, and she was really concerned.”
Boutté said the text messages will begin in November or December, and they will be sent in the beginning, middle and end of future semesters. 
The text messages are being sent through Signal Vine, costing the state $97,000, Boutté said. 
She said LOSFA was awarded the federal College Access Challenge Grant, which works to get students into and help stay in college, to fund the text
messages. 
Students can reply to the interactive messages, and the response is routed into an adviser’s personalized web inbox, allowing them to read the student’s text as an email.
Boutté said LOSFA offers TOPS retention seminars to work with upperclassmen and inform them how to keep the award at no cost to the University. 
“I think the texts will help because I know a lot of sophomores who lost TOPS after freshman year,” Bolds said. “The University doesn’t offer those retention classes anymore, and students need to know that important information.”
Bolds said she tries to not worry about the long process to get her scholarship back because she doesn’t want to revert back to the depression that caused her to lose TOPS initially. 
“If I would have had the text message resource, I would still have my TOPS and I wouldn’t have to go through the process I’m going through now,” Bolds said. 
The LOSFA office plans to extend the program to high school seniors if the college freshman program is successful.