I noticed that in March my school “revoked” my pell grant that I received for fall 2016 and spring 2017. I just realized this and will be calling them on Monday. I am just clueless as to why they would do this, and looking for advice on what to do/possible reasons why this was done. I can’t help but freak out as I don’t have the funds and I am close to graduating.
They never notified me that this was done. I have not failed any classes, nor have I withdrawn from any. I went on the NSLDS site and it shows the amount I was rewarded. None of it has been disbursed, and it shows the total amount they revoked in the “Remaining amount to be paid” section.
The only thing I can think of is that when I applied for 2017/2018 fafsa, I accidentally put my 2016 return information. I didn’t realize that I was suppose to use my 2015 return.
Thanks in advance.
How did you pay last fall’s bills if the PELL wasn’t disbursed?
I did not have an outstanding balance last year. I also did not have one at the beginning of this semester. As the pell grant went through. But now when I look at my school statement it shows the federal pell grant being removed. For both fall 2016 and spring 2017. So now the costs that were originally covered, are now passed onto me. These changes were done in March for both semesters.
School year 2016/2017 uses financial information for tax year 2015.
This has nothing to do with your current situation, which is the removal of your pell for school year 2016/2017, which you would have filed the FAFSA as early as January 1, 2016.
FAFSA for School year 2017/2018 (opening on October 1) filing uses financial information for tax year 2015.
Did you just file the FAFSA for 2017/2018? you will still have time to make changes for that FAFSA especially since school has not started yet.
I recommend logging in to FAFSA and printing out your SAR from your 2016/2017 FAFSA. You will see whatever corrections were made along with your new EFC .You need to visit the financial aid office at your school to see what happened.
If I look at my award history.
It shows the amount offered, the amount accepted. But under the “Paid to Date” it has $0 for the pell grant.
Print your SAR for you 2016-2017 fafsa
I printed my SAR for the 2016/2017 FAFSA. Both the original one and the ‘system corrected’ one. When compared side by side all the information is the same. The only difference is that on the corrected version it says
“This SAR has been produced due to a change in your financial aid history information in the NSLDS. . . based on information from NSLDS, the total amount of Federal Pell Grants that you have received has changed, which may affect your eligibility for additional Pell Grants.”
When looking at the NSLDS site, the only change is that for the award year none of the award amount is disbursed, and now has a “remaining amount to be paid” totaling the amount of PELL that i originally received.
Is this something that was done on the schools part?
Thank you for your assistance in this matter.
Have you exceeded the lifetime total for Pell grants?
Were you selected for verification before the school year started…because your financials did not align with the DRT?
If you didn’t go through a required verification process…it’s possible your Pell could be pulled because of that.
I would make an appointment to talk to financial aid. See what they say.
You said you used the 2016 income information? Was that income lower than 2015?
How long have you been in school? How many terms have you collected PELL. It seems like you may have exhausted your eligibility
I used the 2016 income for the next school year (2017/2018) 2016 income was lower than 2015.
I still have over 2 years left according to the NSLDS site as of the 2016/2017 term.
I am unsure of what DRT is, but for the 2016/2017 term I used the IRS link option. I already sent my information for the 2017/2018 term, and they alerted me that they needed to verify information and they needed my irs transcripts for the year. As I used the wrong tax year when filling it out.
I filled out the 2017/2018 term on the 15 of march. On the 18 is when my 2016/2017 PELL was revoked, and I had a system change to SAR on the 28 of March.
I plan on making an appointment to talk to them, I am going to be calling them first thing on Monday.
first off…please amend your 2017-2018 fafsa and use the 2015 information…otherwise you are going to have problems NEXT year. The 2017-2018 Fafsa REQUIRES the income and taxes from the 2015 income tax year. You cannot use the 2016 info for 2017-2018. Get that done asap as well.
DRT is the IRS Data Retrieval Tool. It currently is NOT functioning.
So…order a 2015 tax transcript as well…because you will need it for your 2017-2018 FAFSA.
In the meantime…yes…make an appointment. Take your fafsa from 2016-2017 with you. Make sure that there were no changes made to it…the school could have found an error and made a change. Ask bout that.
It is very possible that the college found something and you weren’t entitled to,that Pell Grant at all.
Thank you thumper1. I have made changes to the 2017/2018 fafsa once I realized it needed the 2015 tax information. But because of the inaccurate information I had to provide my IRS transcript to the school as well as a couple other forms of verification.
I am not sure what they would have found that would make me inegible to receive the Pell grant. I understand the only way i will find out what is going on is to discuss it with the Financial Aid office.
Again, thank you to everyone who has taken the time to help me.
It’s possible that when the income numbers didn’t match on the 2016-17 and 2017-18 FAFSAs, it triggered something automatic. Talk to the school’s FA office, it may be as simple as correcting the new FAFSA.
When you submitted your 17-18 FAFSA, your income was different than what you reported on the 16-17 FAFSA. This triggers a code that alerts the financial aid office of the difference. Their computer system automatically backed off your Pell … you most likely received an automated message from your aid office telling you what you need to do (if not, it will probably be a manual notification sent when the aid officer assigned to working error reports find the issue).
You are required to submit your tax transcripts (student and parent, if dependent) - this is a federal regulation for this year (since it is the only year that will involve using the tax info used in the previous year). You can change the info, but the school is still supposed to collect the tax transcripts and resolve the issue. Once the error code is resolved, your Pell will be reapplied to your account.
Talk to your aid office for specific instructions.