I was contacted by my 4-year school. I’ve been given multiple Pell Grants. I did however transfer in last fall from a community college. I only registered for the summer there and ask for summer finacial Aid. Now my current financial aid counselor from my 4 year college is saying that I have multiple Pell Grants and I either give them back one of the two to school. But after further contacting my Community College they said they give me the correct amount and my 4-year financial aid counselor is wrong. I’m pretty much stuck in a sticky situation and I want to approach my four year financial aid advisor correctly. How should I approach this? How do I know who is wrong and who is right? Is it my fault that they made an error on their part because we are now in a semester later. Help!
There is a maximum you can get for the year. You have to figure out if the summer was part of the prior school year (I think it is) or the current year. If your maximum Pell is say $3000, and you received $1000 in the summer, that means you only have $2000 to use for the school year at the 4 year school.
Usually, “multiple Pell grants” means the student received two grants in the same semester. When this happens, the student appears on a report from Federal Student Aid that contains names of those who received more than one grant during a particular time period. Because this isn’t allowed, one of the grants has to be returned (I have always worked with the other school to try to get the school that gave the smaller grant to return that grant, but some schools insist that if they paid first, they get to keep the grant on their end).
Go to nslds.ed.gov and sign in. Look at your grants in the system. I don’t know if the aid periods are listed for each of your grant disbursements … if so, look to see if your summer grant and your fall grant have aid periods that overlap. If your current school already canceled your grant for fall, you may not see it listed. Start there & report back to us. I will advise from there.