how a pell grant works
to be eligible for a pell grant students and their parents must fill out the government s free application for federal student aid fafsa 1the application which can be completed online asks a series of questions about the student s and parents finances in addition to other relevant information such as whether any of the student s siblings will be in college at the same time schools that the student applies to will receive an electronic copy of the application financial aid officers at those schools use the fafsa to determine how much federal aid to offer the student the school s calculations consider the difference between the expected family contribution efc as calculated by the fafsa and that school s cost of attendance coa 2to bridge the gap between the efc and the coa the school may offer the student a combination of pell grants subsidized and unsubsidized federal loans and paid work study jobs pell grants and subsidized loans are intended for students with exceptional financial need while unsubsidized loans are available to students and parents regardless of financial need colleges typically make these financial aid offers around the same time that they send out their acceptance letters 34only undergraduate students generally qualify for pell grants though there is an exception for some post baccalaureate teacher training programs 5the confusingly named expected family contribution efc has been renamed the student aid index sai to clarify its meaning for the 2023 24 award year efc does not indicate how much the student and their family must pay the college but is used to calculate how much student aid the applicant is eligible to receive 6pell grant maximums and other limitsthe maximum annual pell grant for the 2023 2024 school year is 7 395 there is also a limit on how much you can receive in total 12 terms or roughly six years of funding 4 to keep track the government calculates your lifetime eligibility used leu percentage while you are receiving pell grants 7you can see how much you have left to go by logging into your my aid account on the department of education s federal student aid website your eligibility for pell grants ends when you receive your degree other federal grants for educationwhile the pell grant is the primary subsidy for higher education the federal government also funds several smaller aid programs like pell grants these grants are for students with extreme financial need as determined through the fafsa the awards range from as little as 100 to as much as 4 000 a year fseogs are not available at every school and the schools that do offer them may have a limited amount of money to allocate 8these grants are for students planning to teach high need subjects such as math science foreign languages and special education in low income areas they are worth up to 4 000 per year 9teach grants recipients are required to fulfill service requirements including at least four years of full time teaching if they fail to do so the grant is converted into a direct federal unsubsidized loan that must be repaid 10these grants are available to students who lost a parent or guardian as a member of the u s armed forces serving in iraq or afghanistan after 9 11 and who don t qualify for a pell grant the student must have been under 24 years old or enrolled in college at least part time at the time of the parent or guardian s death the maximum iraq and afghanistan service grant is based on the maximum pell grant for that year but reduced by 5 7 as a result of the budget control act of 2011 1112