I’m an incoming freshman for the class of 2021 at penn, and I was awarded by penn a federal pell grant. Does anyone know how I actually receive this money?
Penn will receive your Pell Grant and will apply it to your billable charges.
@thumper1 even if penn was the one who awarded it to me and I never got a notification from anywhere else?
The Pell Grant is disbursed to your COLLEGE by the federal government. It shows up as a need based financial aid award on your college financial aid award.
It is used to pay billable costs TO the college (tuition, fees, room, board) first.
Are you anticipating that your need based aid will exceed the cost of attendance at Penn?
Also, if you completed a FAFSA, your SAR would have included something about your eligibility for the Pell Grant.
Yes, pell grants are awarded through the school and applied to your bill, along with other forms of financial aid. The schools have an order of application because Pell grants are one form of aid that can be given to the students if other aid pays all the billed costs.
Say Penn will cost you $60k for the year. If you have $45k in Penn grants, that leaves $15k to pay. If you have a Pell of $5000, you’ll still need to pay Penn $10,000 (family contribution? student contribution?)
If your Penn grant was $57k, and you had Pell of $5000, you’d get $2k from the school’s FA office ($60k-$57k-$5000= ($2000)). You’d be expected to also make your family and student contribution, and those would be things you pay OOP, like books, travel, incidental expenses.
The Pell grant is included in your financial aid package. It’s not separate.
It IS possible that your financial aid awards will,exceed the billable costs…as some schools include personal,expenses in your financial aid award.
If there is extra money in a term, it will be refunded to you following the college’s procedures for doing so.
@thumper1 @twoinanddone So i dont need to do anything extra to make sure that the pell grant money is actually given to me/penn/applied to my tuition?
Your school will apply the Pell first to tuition, since they have to protect their investment. Anything left over will be released as a check to you, in two installments. However, you should be aware that just because they use it for tuition first doesn’t mean your parents have to when figuring out their taxes next year. If your parents claim an EITC, please read the following:
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents/Report-Pell-AOTC-Interaction-2014.pdf
This is complicated, but it is correct and can save you money in some cases.
Schools don’t have to apply Pell first. Penn might, but my daughter’s school applies it last because it is refundable (and D uses it for R&B).
Stressedsenior, look at your bill and awards letter. You should be able to see the Pell grant as part of the total financial aid, and you can see how it will fit in. If the total billable costs are less than the total award, you’ll get some money back. If not, you won’t.
brooklynlydia, you don’t need to claim EITC to claim the AOTC. Those are different credits.
@stressedsenior99 , your Pell grant will automatically be applied to your account by the school, without you needing to do anything (other than provide any requested documents to the financial aid office, if applicable). It’s important to realize that Pell is paid based on your enrollment, so you will need to have at least 12 credits in each semester to get your full semester amount for your Pell grant in that semester.
If you’re asking about what you actually need to do when bills come out, it varies by school. So look on your financial aid site or call. D’s school use to post bills and then you went and clicked on “pay with scholarship/FA” and it applied it and then gave you a balance. Now they sweep the financial aid and scholarships on a specific date and then just post any remainder bill for us to cover. So check to see what you need to do at your school.