Pell Grant Requirements After the Free Grant Applications

And if you do not want to have to return your free Pell grant money, you have to complete your term, and not withdraw before the end of the payment period.

Not meeting the requirements for your grant will have consequences, but many students are unaware upfront, that there are conditions for "never repay" college funding.

In order for you to collect and keep your entire Pell grant award, you must stay enrolled until the 60% mark of the payment period. If you withdraw (or your school considers you withdrawn) before that, there are federal formulas to determine how much of your grant you earned on a pro rata basis.

New federal guidelines for 2012-2013 do not give your school any leeway in determining how long you were enrolled, and therefore how much of an award you are entitled to. But they do have some independence when determining what "satisfactory academic progress" means at their institution.

Your school sets the standards by which you maintain your eligibility.

You have to be enrolled as a regular student in a degree or certificate program and meet whatever standards your school says are acceptable to stay in that program. And there are stricter requirements if you want to use your federal Pell grant eligibility to receive two awards in one school year. (NOTE: This program was eliminated.)

Satisfactory Academic Progress

If you fail to meet this standard because of illness or other special circumstances, you can appeal when your financial aid is canceled. Your school has the power to grant your appeal.

A program that is less than two years must have comparable standards.

• courses that were dropped after the official drop/add deadline passed
• courses that were later repeated
• remedial courses
• ESL courses

Satisfactory academic progress is also measured by the length of time needed for students to complete their degree requirements.

In order to maintain your Pell grant qualifications, you must be on track to complete your degree without taking more than 150% of the time your school says is needed to do so.

So, for a degree that takes 120 credit hours, you can only get awards for 180 attempted credit hours.

You can get awards for remedial courses as long as you are:

• admitted into a degree program first
• taking courses your school says is necessary to your degree (even if they are taken before any regular courses)
• only taking up to 30 credit hours of remedial coursework

If you transfer, your SAP grades will include any credits from your previous school that apply towards a degree in your new school. This makes sense because of what a Pell grant is- a mobile grant which belongs to the student, not the school.

If your Pell grant application is denied because you are not making satisfactory academic progress, you have the right to appeal. By granting an appeal, your school is suspending its progress standards. Usually the school will set a probationary period- at the end of which you must again be meeting the Pell grant requirements.

Other Pell-Specific Requirements

Pell grant amounts will be reduced if your enrollment status changes, because you are not taking the number of credits required. But the grant is not completely revoked- just reduced. The Pell grant calculator can tell you by how much.

If you end up owing excess grant money, it must be paid back (or a satisfactory arrangement must be in place) before your next Pell grant form is submitted.

New Pell grant requirements mandate that students who receive their first award on or after July 1, 2012, will only get up to six awards in total (or 12 semesters). (Between 2008 and 2012 it was 9 years, but Congress revised this requirement in Dec. 2011.)

Also, with the passage of SAFRA, federal Pell grant awards have been recalculated, so you may get a different amount than before.

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