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A disbursement simply means that a portion of your financial aid awards for the year was applied to your account at the school. Whether you get a refund back or not depends on whether there was money left over after the school's direct charges (such as tuition and fees) were paid. If so, the school must refund it to you within 14 days.

We can't tell from what you said in your question whether you will receive a refund. Usually when you receive a statement from the school it will show your balance at the bottom. If that number is negative, then that generally means there was more aid than was needed to pay the charges and you will be receiving that amount as a refund.

Keep in mind that schools use grant money first to pay their own charges, so in many cases that "refund" you receive isn't really a refund at all because the source of the money is a student loan that you will have to pay back with interest. While it may seem great to get a big check now, it won't seem so great after you graduate and you have a much bigger debt burden than you could have had. If you don't absolutely need the funds for educational expenses (such as paying for books or transportation), you might want to talk to your financial aid department about reducing your loans to just the amount that you need to pay your school's direct charges. If you do decide to keep it, don't go out an blow it all on something you don't really need or 10 years from now you could still be paying for a pizza you bought today. A better idea would be to put the money aside to help pay for summer classes or to pay the interest on your unsubsidized loans while you are in school so it doesn't accumulate and increase your debt burden later on.

This money is what you use to pay for college , and buy books with . whatever you don't use will be given to you as a refund when college starts about the first week or 2nd week is when you'll get it ..