Calculating Pell Grants

Pell Grant scheduled awards are based on the 9-month Expected Family Contribution (EFC) on the student’s valid SAR or ISIR, the academic year structure (see Volume 3, Chapter 1), and the cost of attendance (COA) for a full-time student for a full academic year (see Volume 3, Chapter 2). The Scheduled Award amounts are specified on the Pell Grant payment schedules released by the U.S. Department of Education (the Department). For term-based programs, awards for part-time students are also based on enrollment status, using the part-time charts in the Pell Grant payment schedules.

The Scheduled Award is the maximum amount a student can receive during the award year if the student attends full time for a full academic year. The award year begins on July 1 of one year and ends on June 30 of the next year. For example, the 2023-2024 award year begins July 1, 2023, and ends June 30, 2024.

The student’s Scheduled Award is established by the Pell Grant payment schedules that the Department issues prior to the start of each award year. The amount of the Scheduled Award is always taken from the full-time payment schedule and is based on the student’s EFC and COA. The annual award is the maximum amount a student would receive during a full academic year for a given enrollment status, EFC, and COA. Note that for a full-time student, the annual award will be the same as the Scheduled Award.

A part-time student who is enrolled in a term-based program will have an annual award that is less than the Scheduled Award. If the student attends part time, the student’s annual award is taken from the three-quarter-time, half-time, or less-than-half-time disbursement schedules. For instance, if a student’s Scheduled Award is $7,395, but the student is enrolled as a half-time student in a term program, the student’s annual award would be $3,698. The Department issues one schedule for full-time Scheduled Awards, and separate schedules for three-quarter-time, half-time, and less-than-half-time awards.

The maximum Pell Grant award for 2023-2024 is $7,395 (see the “Year-Round Pell and Iraq and Afghanistan Service Grant” section in Chapter 5 of this volume on how a student may be eligible to receive up to an additional 50% of their scheduled award). The maximum eligible EFC for the 2023-2024 award year is 6656. Actual Pell awards are unique to individual students and are based upon and limited by the student's enrollment status, EFC, COA, and Lifetime Eligibility Used (LEU). For more on LEU, see Chapter 8 of this volume. The tables below show selected EFC and COA amounts as they are displayed in the Pell Grant full-time Scheduled Award and half-time annual award schedules for the 2023-2024 award year. These tables show, for example, that the Scheduled Award for a full-time student with an EFC from 3501 to 3600 and a COA from $5,000 to $5,099 would be $1,500. A half-time student with the same EFC and COA would have an annual award of $750.

You must source Pell Grant funds from the award year to which the payment period is assigned. When awarding Pell Grants for a crossover payment period, you may assign the payment period to the award year that best meets the needs of your students and maximizes a student’s eligibility over the two award years in which the crossover payment period occurs. For general information about payment periods, see Chapter 1 of Volume 3, and for more detail on crossover payment periods, see the section on crossover payment periods in Chapter 5 of this volume.

Except for subscription-based programs (see Volume 2 and Volume 3, Chapter 1 for information on subscription-based programs), if all coursework is scheduled to be completed within a specific time frame, the program generally can be considered term-based. Term-based programs can have either standard terms or nonstandard terms. Pell Grants are usually calculated differently for the two types of terms. Standard-term programs may be treated similarly to nonstandard-term programs if the program does not conform to a traditional academic calendar or meet certain other conditions. Regardless of whether coursework is generally offered using terms, schools always have the option of treating a program as a non-term program for Title IV purposes. See Volume 3, Chapter 1 for detailed guidance on standard term, nonstandard term, and non-term programs.

When calculating Pell Grants, you must generally use the same formula for all years in a student’s program. In most cases, a program’s academic calendar determines the formula that must be used to calculate Pell Grant awards, and that formula is then used for all years of the program. However, for programs offered in standard terms a school has the option of choosing between different Pell formulas, as explained later in this chapter. For such programs a school normally chooses one of the allowable formulas and uses that same formula for the duration of the program, but in rare cases a school may have reason to change from the originally selected formula to a different allowable formula. Any such change in Pell formulas for standard term programs can only be made at the beginning of a new award year.

Pell Grants must be spread out in disbursements over the course of a program of study to help meet the student’s costs in each payment period. The payment period affects when Pell funds are disbursed and the exact amount to be disbursed. See Volume 3, Chapter 1 for further discussion and definitions of payment periods.

A student who doesn’t enroll in one of the payment periods of a program won’t receive the portion of their award for that payment period. If the student’s enrollment status changes in the next payment period, the annual award will be different for that payment period.

If any program uses standard terms, the enrollment status standards in the program don’t have to be proportional. For instance, a program could have a 15-hour standard for full-time enrollment but set a 9-hour minimum for three-quarter-time status and a 6-hour minimum for half-time status.

In addition, your school’s academic standard may differ from the enrollment standard used by the financial aid office for FSA purposes. For example, your school's academic policy may define full time as six hours during the summer, but the financial aid office uses 12 hours as the full-time standard for all terms, including the summer term. Your school must apply its FSA full-time enrollment standards consistently to all students enrolled in the same program of study for all FSA purposes. For more on enrollment status, see Volume 1, Chapter 1.