Different Pell Grant for different colleges?

Paying for College
1

When we filed the FAFSA, it told us we were eligible for a Pell Grant of up to $4,370. At the time, I didn’t fully understand what the number meant, so I paid it no attention until we started receiving financial aid packages from D’s colleges. Now, each school she has been accepted to has shown a different number for the Pell Grant in her financial aid package.

One college placed it at the $4,370 number that was given on the FAFSA. Another school put her Pell Grant award at $3,070, and a third one put it at $2,770. We have contacted the first two schools about the award and stated that we received different Pell numbers from another school, and they both stated that they were certain their number was accurate since they verified it with the FAFSA, CSS Profile, and tax returns.

Basically, I don’t understand if this is normal or if I made a mistake when filing the FAFSA. Any advice for how I should handle this situation?

2

The number can only be different if the schools change the FAFSA report, which they can do if they have different information from your financials.

3

Can you go online and see if your FAFSA was changed?

4

I’m pretty sure you can look through your fafsa history and pull the SAR for each set of changes. you’ll be able to see the schools that SAR was submitted to.

if that doesn’t work, ask the school to explain the EFC they used to determine the Pell and all the data that went into it. The variation you’re seeing is quite unusual. We had identical pells across the board, even with the occasional school submitting corrections.

5

I checked the FAFSA history, and I didn’t see any changes made by colleges. The correction history only showed the first time we filled out the FAFSA and the time we added more colleges. No changes from colleges were shown.

ETA: In both SARs, the Pell grant award we were eligible for was the $4370 number.

6

The colleges that gave the lower Pell estimate, did they request W2 forms in addition to tax returns?

Did you have pretax 401k contributions during 2015 that you didn’t list on the FAFSA under untaxed income?

7

@mommdc The school that gave us the full Pell Grant from our SAR and the one that gave us $3070 both requested the W2 forms, but the other school that gave us a lower estimate didn’t. No, we did not have any pre-tax 401k contributions during 2015, so that cannot be the issue.

8

That is strange, your FAFSA EFC should be the same everywhere and therefore your Pell grant too. I would try and call to find out why the amount they are quoting is less than on the SAR.

9

Did you do the DRT data transfer when filing FAFSA?

10

@mommdc Thank you for the advice! I’ll likely call on Monday to figure out what the problem is.

@Tanbiko Yes, I used the IRS Data Retrieval tool but then I checked all the numbers with my tax returns just to make sure.

11

I think you need to call each one and find out what THEY think your FAFSA EFC is and find out why they differ.