Am I Pell Grant eligible?

Paying for College
1

<p>I wanted to apply for the Gates Millennium Scholarship. I found out about it a couple days ago and it looks nice. However, I am not sure if I quality as being Pell Grant eligible? First of all, I am from a family of 5. My mom is unemployed and my dad's income is $66,000. How would I determine if I was eligible or not?</p>

2

<p>You won’t get an official EFC until you file your FAFSA for next year…after January 1st, the FAFSA will be available online. In the meantime, you can get an estimated EFC by completing the fafsa4caster:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.fafsa4caster.ed.gov%5B/url%5D”>www.fafsa4caster.ed.gov</a></p>

3

<p>Here is a link to the FAFSA formula for 2010-2011. You can print it out, and work through it on paper. That way you can see which factors most affect your FAFSA EFC, and your family may still have time to re-arrange things a bit before the end of 2010 and/or when you actually file in early 2011.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/111609EFCFormulaGuide20102011.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/111609EFCFormulaGuide20102011.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Wishing you all the best.</p>

4

<p>The EFC cut off for the Pell grant for 2010-2011 was around 5273. An income of $66,000 may be just verging on a little high for pell eligibility or may just squeak in, difficult to tell until you run your actual numbers as there are other factors other than just Dad’s income (for instance parent assets, unemployment benefits if there are any, student income/assets, number of college students in household etc).</p>

<p>As suggested, run your numbers through the FAFSA forecaster to get an idea. Good luck.</p>