It's not easy to get a substantial amount of grant money. Do you actually know how much they would be getting? It might not be as much as you think. I believe I had some Pell grants when I went to college way back when but most financial aid is in the form of loans (i.e you have to pay it back!)

The government has guidelines and if the student meets the criteria they will get money, if not, they don't. I wouldn't worry about abuse (unless you think these students are lying on the grant applications).

Well..the bad news is, they still are going to count the parents income, and the pell grant is for low income students.
To qualify on their own income, the students have to have lived on their own and supported themself for several years as I remember. Kathy

BTW, The Pell Grant MAXIMUM yearly award is only under $5K. That won't get students very far.

My DD does know one student who gets a monthly check for $700. for his Pell Grant. His dorm rent is $330. and I think he is in the MO A+ program (which gives free tuition). So he is doing pretty well! His parents are divorced, not financially well off and I am sure they qualify for the grant.

I've never known financial aid to be handed out monthly, unless they changed things.

When I was 19, I was dating the Assistant Director of Financial Aid at Wayne State. He helped me fill out my Pell Grant application, and he loved registration time of year. He liked helping people get money for school and would cut corners if he legally could. That was 29 years ago and the criteria may have changed since then. Back then, a student had to have lived away from home for a year in order to file as an independent. More recently, someone told me they still consider the parent's income, so it's harder to be considered independent. Whether friend #1 receives it should be interesting to see.

I don't care who receives one since I know and knew of a few young people who want to attend school, but their parents won't pay or help despite being financially able. There is no one to say they have to, even though I think it's unfair. The father of one of these people refuses because he says he made his own way, so they have to.

I got Pell Grants while in school, the check came once a semester and I had to make it stretch a long way.

I wonder how anyone really knows how well off someone is or isn't. People with big homes, expensive cars can be very poor and near bankrupt, trying to make all those huge payments.

Even if you don't live at home, and are completely financially dependent, if you are under the age of 24 (and are unmarried, have no children, and are not a veteran), then you are still considered a dependent, and your parents' income will be included when filing out a FAFSA. This page has a nice list of what determines whether or not you're independent or not.

It totally stunk for me, because I moved out at 18, and was completely independent with no help from my parents through college (NONE!), and yet their income still had bearing on my financial aid. Luckily, they were pretty poor, so I still got decent aid packages. And yes, the Pell Grants come in once a semester -- mine went wholly towards my tuition, as I recall.

That page was very helpful rivadr!! Thanks!

Looks like neither of my DD's friends will be getting any Pella Grant money. Her BF was really depending on this too.

I think it might depend on the school how the Pella Grants are distributed. I found this:
"Administration of Pell Grant Awards by educational institutions involves a great deal of man-power. This case study demonstrates a database which aids in the management of the overall student grant function. This ranges from registration of students, issuance of award letters, record student hours and disbursement of grant money on a monthly basis by check to the students."
DD's friend may have been getting other grants as well, I don't know. He claims to be getting a check for $700. anyhow.

I can't really remember that much about the Pell grants but remember filling out the paper work for DD. She attended College of the Ozarks, near Branson, and worked her way through. Had to work so many hours a week on campus for tuition and during the summer for room and board. Then she could hold down any evening jobs she wanted and make her own spending money. She did really well and ended up with money in a savings account. She was very frugal with her money, came home to visit occasionally, and shopped a thrift shop for clothes and lived on tacos and water a lot in the evenings, got her other meals on campus.

It's a great college for kids when the parents cannot afford to send their kids to college and that was us. Lots of kids from this area attend that college. I feel that if they have to work for their education they will appreciate it that much more. And, DD's grades did not suffer at all with her working. She didn't have to work evenings but she wanted to do so. During the school year it was part time and during the summer full time evenings.

Yup, the way it works stinks. My dad couldn't help me pay for college (even though according to the gov't, he could), and I had been living away from home for several years. But because I was still under 24, I couldn't get any grants at all, and ended up taking out an enormous amount of loans. I think they need to fix the system. My really poor friends got plenty of grants and my rich friend's parents paid their way. The middle class kids are the ones who have the hardest time paying for college.

when i was in college i too could not get help because i moved out at 18, to make it worse i had to make good $$ to support myself in chicago. my parents were CPA's, they could easily afford it but i would not study finance/accounting so i was left out. i ended up working full time, going to school part-time and by the time i turned 24 was making too much $$ to qualify and had become accustomed to finer things and couldn't cut back on the work $$. took me forever to finish but i paid it off w/in each semester, took out no loans and finished w/ a house full of designer clothes and furniture lol.

i got no counseling in high school about financial aid or scholarships, even thou i graduated in the top 3% of my class and would have done things very differently if i had known better. growing up in a family of accountants i was improperly steered away from loans or credit cards of any kind. i would have taken out a loan and gone to school full-time and tried to find scholarships. oh well i learned ALOT and have done very well for myself and really i mean by myself lol.

my dh started back to college a few yrs ago part-time to change degrees. luckily his county job paid for 2 classes a semester and he did that for 4 yrs while working full-time. he recently left his job and starts going full-time this mon. working on an accelerated masters (dual BS/MS) in engineering. we make too much $$ to qualify for anything but stafford loans. because he's white and 37 yrs old he doesn't qualify for most scholarships or any aid, even thou he has an A+ average. he only gets $500 in scholarships (buys 1 book) per semester. but he will make over $90K a yr when done so it's more than worth having to get $20-30K in federal low interest loans, he'll pay off in 2 yrs. we are very very lucky that we have no credit card debt, no car loans owed, we both make good $$ and i have $200K in home equity plus plenty of savings and retirement. i would like for him to get some sort of reward for his academic achievements in the form of scholarships but considering the starting pay at the end and the internships paying $20 per hr he's up for, i shouldn't complain i guess. when he is done w/ his MS i will go back and get my MS, you can not get ahead very far w/out advanced degrees in our fields of engineering, biology and chemistry.

i would advise them to just get loans but be very smart about them. kids graduating today grossly underestimate how little they will earn at first and how extremely expensive it is to live in major cities. in these days (sure makes me sound old LOL) there are few jobs where a BS degree isn't requirred and once you have that job you have to continue education just to keep up w/ your competition in the market. i hope they figure out how to stay in school! ~ liz

I got Pell Grants back in the 1970's. I'm not sure if the rules are different. We were poor. Dad was unemployed for many years and Mom was always a housewife. I got $400 a semester, not every month. It barely covered my tuition. I also borrowed $8000 from a bank and paid it all back after I graduated.

they do count the parents income until the student is TWENTY FOUR.... unless, of course, you have a baby, or are married. Unless the student can PROVE that the parents give NO support WHAT SO EVER and that they live on their own... and from what I understand, the student has to be living on hteir own for quite awhile... quite a while.
My friend has a daughter that screwed up, and had a baby at 18 years old. And she had her entire education payed for. Her other daughter a straight A student, has recieved a couple of small scholarships based on grade point, and her parents help her. She doesn't qualify for the good student loans, either.
Our DS doens't qualify for the good student loans either. He would have to start paying them back now, not when he graduates.

If I could do it all over again, I would do my first two years at a community college (such cheap tuition!!) and get the easy pre-requisites and required classes out of the way. Yeah, maybe you miss out on some of the fun stuff on the big campus, but when I weigh that against the thousands of dollars I owe in student loans...really, I could live with that.

My sister handles financial aid at a college and she has been helping my dd as much as possible. I can say that if they get a Pell grant, it generally goes to tuition and books - in other words, back to the college. My daughter gets a bill before the start of every semester (they sign up during the middle of a semester for the following semester). On that bill, it lists what she owes and then takes off what she gets for financial aid, loans, and scholarships. (she received loans and scholarships). I know that a pell grant will never cover the whole thing but it is likely they get other types of grants thru the various states. That could be why some people get monthly checks. The system they have today is very messed up, IMO. It is almost impossible to get a pell grant or other state grants unless you are very poor. Therefore, the kids are forced to take out huge loans or hope their parents help them out. We help out our daughter - we told her we would pay half of her school bill but she needs to ask us for it. I'm not just putting the money in her bank account without seeing a bill. It has worked very well for us. It forces her to plan ahead and gives me a heads up. Can we afford this large amount? NO - and that's what bothers me most about the grants. There is no reason that a kid should be getting a monthly free check for what I'm assuming is living expenses. I say get a job like the others have to. It's only fair. Now as for getting the money to go to college- books, tuition, and possibly room & board on campus - then I'd not have a problem with it. Living expenses (IMO) should be paid by the student, not by the taxpayers.

Oh, a friend of DS's got a job at City university, and gets to take some classes for free....

Thanks for all the info guys.

Donna - I knew some people who went to School of the Ozarks too. It's a great college.

DD's BF will be working anywhere from 20 to 30 hours a week off campus to pay his dorm, food and other bills. His tuition is free through the A+ program (as long as he can keep his grades up). He will have to get a small loan I'm sure. DD works on campus (childcare center), we make her pay for any food she doesn't eat in the cafeteria, tolietries, any school supplies besides books and whatever else she needs to make it through the month. She's actually starting to clip coupons now! lol She's getting A+ money for tuiton too and I hope she can keep it up (it's saved us close to $4000. this year).

Hi! I live in Missouri and I work at a community college. Not in the financial aid office, though, so I really don't know much about PELL grants. When I first started working there, I was in the student registration office, and I knew that some students were there only for the PELL money. They would get enough $$ to pay their tuition and books, with extra left over, which they could spend however they wanted. (They were supposed to use it for gas, child care, etc. But nobody policed that.) I remember lots of kids who would enroll, get their PELL check leftovers about 6 weeks into the semester, then drop out. So they got that money for nothing. It got so bad that the college made a policy that if you dropped out a certain number of times, you couldn't get back in as a full-time student until you took a class and completed it first. And you couldn't get a PELL grant unless you took at least 6 credit hours per semester. So that stopped those students from coming back, cause they wouldn't pay for a class themselves.

In the 70's, I went to community college on a BEOG grant -- they're called PELL grants today. It paid for all my tuition and books. My parents were very poor - my dad worked at a factory and my mother never worked, and I was the oldest of 6 kids. My boyfriend (now my DH) went too, and his BEOG paid for only his tuition; he didn't get enough for his books. He was the oldest of 2 kids and was in a single-parent family.

Isn't the A+ wonderful??? Lots and lots of kids attend our community college on A+. I'm not sure how much longer the state of Missouri can afford to offer this program, but it's great.