<p>when is the deadline for qualifying for the grant</p>
<p>There is no deadline. If you are eligible & complete any requirements your school might have (that is, if they require you to self-identify or if they need you to give them your transcript - they WILL let you know if they need anything!) - you will get it.</p>
<p>BUT … you must be eligible. You have to have Pell. If not, no ACG. Your high school classes & grades will be reviewed against the standards set by the government. If you have need (before loans & work study are awarded), you will get $750 the first year.</p>
<p>thank you kelsmom</p>
<p>My FAFSA asked me questions about the ACG (like, eligibility questions) and I qualified. However, since I will attend a school that meets 100% need, I won’t get that, right? I got a school scholarship, a Pell, a SEOG, and Work-Study and it covered it all, anyway. I’m just wondering because some of my friends are getting ACG offered in some school packages and not others?</p>
<p>When my daughter was offered the ACG it was offered much later than her other aid. As far as I recall it was not awarded till right before, or maybe even right after, the fall semester started. This is because they must check your transcripts to confirm that you are eligible. In her case it replaced a loan. If she had no loans it would have reduced her WS.</p>
<p>I would think they would still give it to you if you are eligible as it would replace other non grant aid and is money from the govt rather than the school.</p>
<p>I questioned the financial aid office for D, when I saw that ACG was not listed…I’d done my homework, and as far as I can tell, she meets all the criteria. They responded that they would begin the evaluations for AGC (and SMART) in the next couple of weeks, and if she qualifies, it will be added. I was really confused in the fin aid process about whether we needed to do anything special to apply. The $750 will be nice (book money for a semester, maybe), but her older sister looks like she’ll qualify for the SMART grant this year, which is a more sizeable $4K, as far as I can tell…</p>
<p>2nd year ACG is $1300.</p>
<p>My daughter should also qualify for the SMART astrophysicsmom. I am curious to see if her school puts it in her initial aid award or if we have to wait like we did with the ACG. To complicate things she *may *drop a class in the next week or so which will put her a little short of the hours required to be a ‘junior’, but she is taking summer classes so will be back up there by fall. I will be keeping a close eye on her aid!!</p>
<p>Wish they would award it already. They are slow this year.</p>
<p>I was really far behind in awarding ACG & SMART. It is really, really time consuming. We cannot award ACG or SMART at my school until after drop/add is over. We have to confirm full time status (ACG & SMART), eligible class enrollment (SMART), etc., etc. ACG cannot be officially awarded until the final high school transcript is on file & reviewed for eligible classes - this involves several departments at my school - and awards have to be adjusted to fit the awards in (reducing loans or work study, if necessary). If ACG or SMART is awarded before the checks are done & the checks reveal that the student is not eligible, then the school is liable for the disbursement. I work at a school where many do not qualify, so we can’t afford to award before we do all checks. In short, both programs are very difficult to monitor, and the larger the school the longer it will take.</p>
<p>So do you go ahead and make the rest of the awards Kelsmom. I can understand the SMART being added later but am getting a bit ancy that the rest of my daughter’s award has not been posted (all they show right now is her merit money). Mostly I am nervous because the cut off date for being eligible for our state grant is April. She filed FAFSA back in feb so I am getting nervous that she will not get it. (I don’t know exactly how it all works as far as deadlines). I am tempted to have her send them an email to make sure she hasn’t fallen between the cracks somehow.</p>
<p>We do award everything else & then go back and make adjustments. If we had a stronger student population, we might be able to just award upfront, assuming they’ll qualify - but we ain’t HYP! If all your D"s school posted is merit, they may not be ready to do the need based awarding yet. Is she a returning student? Oh, duh - yes, she is! We aren’t doing those yet - D’s school isn’t even posting them until after grades are posted! Even when my school posts, we don’t include any of our state awards. This is because we don’t know about them yet - the state has to send us a roster of awards, which doesn’t happen until summer.</p>
<p>If your experience in past years has been different, you should contact the f/a department to make sure her file didn’t fall through the cracks. THEY DO!!! I worked at an open house this weekend & a prospective freshman said he hadn’t received his award letter (we sent them out almost 2 weeks ago to this group). He turned in his FAFSA in January. When I checked his file today, I found out that it got stuck in computer pergatory - it was brought in, but not uploaded. Had he not asked, he may never have been awarded.</p>
<p>I am trying to remember when last years was done. I think it was done by now but am not sure.</p>
<p>Actually I just looked through my old emails and there was one my daughter forwarded to me last year about her financial aid where they were saying she had not accepted a couple of awards and that she had 30 days from the offer to accept it (she likes to run anything from the bursars or finaid by me to check out). It says she had to accept it by May 9 so I guess the award must have been made @ April 9. Ok - panic over - I will stop fretting - well I will try and cut back on my fretting until this time next week anyway.</p>
<p>We make it easy - we accept all grants for students automatically … can’t imagine why a student WOULDN’T want a grant! :)</p>
<p>Here’s why you might not want the ACG. At many privates it
gets added to your first year package $750 - you don’t get
the grant - the college does. If you get the second year $1300
that’s great - you may or may not get the extra $550 depending
on the college. But if you are not in the sciences the next two
years you pick up the $750. So at many privates this grant
actually costs you $950 and if you don’t get a “B” in the first
year, $2200. If this money was paid directly to the student or
even a tax credit to the family it would be great, but as it is, at
the privates it’s just more money for them and less for you.</p>
<p>You can’t get a first year award if you have too many credits. If you are in your third year of school & don’t get SMART, you can’t just get ACG - you are too far along. “Be enrolled in the first or second academic year of your program of study at a two-year or four-year degree-granting institution.”</p>
<p>I fail to understand why someone would want their school to have to pay what the government is willing to pay. Tuition goes up as expenditures rise.</p>
<p>In my daughter’s case the ACG amount would otherwise have been loans, so we are certainly happy she got it. Even more excited about the SMART.</p>
<p>I am surprised that the ACG would be a bad thing at a private school. Wouldn’t those schools that promise to meet full need without loans do so either way.</p>
<p>It’s great that the government will give your school $750 the first
year and very nice that they will give your school 1300 the second
year if you do well. But many privates determine the limit of your
merit/need based award upon application. That amount doesn’t rise.
You are left to pay the increases in tuition every year and if you
don’t get the smart - the student picks up those costs too for junior
and senior year. Here’s the killer about the ACG. At many privates you
would be better off to decline it - The school would add that initial
$750 into your need based grant and you’d be covered for all 4 years.
It’s a nice grant for colleges but at many privates a real rip-off for
students. I bet the lobby for the privates wrote this bill.</p>
<p>swm - there just aren’t that many schools out there any more that
meet 100% need. Most establish a base line award and then pass along
yearly costs to the students</p>
<p>I would be surprised if a school added in an equal amount of money you declined, using their own funds to cover it. But I don’t have experience with that type of school, so I won’t say it doesn’t happen. It would just surprise me.</p>
<p>At my son’s school anything coming from the government will go to the college, not him. But then the college meets full need without loans, so any incoming from the government is just that little bit the college doesn’t have to cover in institutional grants. I’m glad they get it! … I mean, what with endowments taking such a big hit recently.</p>
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<p>I’d be very surprised if any private college guarantees a level grant amount over 4 years for need based aid, since it’s EFC driven they can’t possibly predict what your need would be over that period. Level merit aid is a different thing.</p>
<p>When you see colleges that meet 90% or 85% of need, or less,
that is the majority of Lac’s, it’s likely that they establish an
admission baseline and you pick up the costs from there. As one
finaid officer told me, “sure we’ll recalculate your efc - if you hit
the lotto!”</p>