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Inner regional students
If you’re eligible, you can get a one off lump sum of $3,000 in the first half of your study year.
We’ll pay you after you confirm your study details. You’ll need to meet all eligibility criteria at that time, including being enrolled in full time study.
Outer regional and remote students
If you’re an outer regional or remote student, you may be able to get this payment in 2 instalments.
First instalment
If you’re eligible, you can get an instalment of $3,000 in the first half of your study year.
We’ll pay you after you confirm your study details. You’ll need to meet all eligibility criteria at that time, including being enrolled in full time study.
Second instalment
If you stay enrolled in full time study, you can get a second instalment of $2,000. We’ll pay you in either:
- September of the same year you started studying
- March in the following year, if you started studying in the second half of the year.
Enrolment checks
Before we pay you, we check you’re a current student. If you apply for this payment but aren’t a current student when we check your enrolment, we won’t pay you.
You can only get this payment once, and only in your first year of study. This payment is not taxable.
Income from scholarships
The Tertiary Access Payment is considered an equity or merit based scholarship. This means we don’t normally count it as income when we check if you can get another payment from us.
However, we do count equity or merit based scholarships as income in some situations. Any scholarship amount over $9,724 counts as income and may affect your payment rate for other payments.
If you get more than one equity or merit based scholarship, the $9,724 applies to the total amount you get, not to each one.