The Federal Pell Grant Program

This volume of the Federal Student Aid Handbook provides information to assist schools in determining student eligibility for and calculating the amount of Federal Pell Grants.

Throughout Volume 7, all dates, award years, and dollar values have been updated to reflect the 2025–26 processing year. Also, where appropriate, links and publications associated with FSA’s Partner Connect and Knowledge Center have been updated.

Note: Statutory citations are to the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965, as amended.

We added a reminder that schools must work with any student who indicates on the FAFSA form that their parent or guardian was killed in the line of duty to document and, if determined eligible, certify eligibility for a maximum Pell Grant under the Special Rule.

In the “Calculated Pell” section, we added set of steps for determining the calculated Scheduled Award to clarify when a school should and should not round to the nearest $5. We updated the examples to demonstrate these steps.

We added a section titled “Less Than Half Time Pell Grant Cost of Attendance” to demonstrate this concept and provide an example of how a Pell Grant may be limited by a less-than-half-time COA.

We added a fourth example titled “Less-than-half-time Enrollment and Pell Grant COA” to the “Pell Formula 1” section, which incorporates the concept of a less-than-half-time Pell Grant COA with a less-than-half-time enrollment intensity proration.

There were no substantive changes in Chapters 5-8 or the Appendix.