Must a student graduating from high school have to have a GPA of 2.0 to qualify for a Pell Grant in 2011?

by Bill
(Virginia)

I have been told that...


a new requirement beginning in the fall of 2011 is that a new incoming freshman must have graduated with a high school grade point average of at least a 2.0 to be eligible to qualify and receive a Pell grant in 2011.

Is this true?

ANSWER:

There is no federal Pell grant specification for a minimally acceptable grade point average for an incoming student. The only academic criteria that the federal government sets is that the student must have a high school diploma. (This does not apply to home-schooled students.)

Obviously, a low GPA limits the number of schools who would accept the student- a for-profit school probably would, as well as a community college in a state that guaranteed acceptance for any student that graduated from a high school in that state.

Colleges do set academic requirements for keeping the Pell grant each year, but this varies from school to school. All the federal government requires is for schools to have set policies for satisfactory academic progress, with procedures to withhold financial aid from students who do not meet them. Students must be informed of these standards and of the school appeals process.