If scholarships cover your entire cost of attendance this fall, your Pell Grant is gone. Not trimmed. Gone.
Thatâs the rule for the 2026-27 award year, and it lands hardest on the students who did everything they were told to do.
Hereâs how it works. If grants and scholarships from non-federal sources, meaning your state, your school, and private donors, add up to at least your cost of attendance for the period, you canât receive a Pell Grant for it. The University of Marylandâs aid office says those students are ineligible âeven if otherwise eligible for the program.â
Read the verb again. Equal or exceed. Not âexceed by a comfortable margin.â A student who lands one dollar over the line loses the entire award, up to $7,395 this year.
Nobody explains that at the scholarship banquet.
The number your school picks
Cost of attendance isnât your tuition bill. Itâs a figure your school builds out of tuition, fees, housing, food, books, transportation, and personal expenses. Your school sets it. Your school also runs the comparison, at disbursement, and decides whether you cleared the bar.
So two students with identical scholarships at two different schools can get different answers, because the schools drew the line in different places.
What it costs you
The maximum Pell for 2026-27 is $7,395. The minimum is $740. Those come from the Education Departmentâs own letter to schools, GEN-26-01, dated January 30, 2026.
When Pell money exceeds your direct charges, the school refunds the difference to you. Thatâs the check students use for a laptop, a security deposit, a car repair, a flight home at Thanksgiving. For a full-ride student, that check was often the only cash in the equation.
It isnât coming now.
Whether thatâs fair policy is an argument for somebody else. What it is, for you, is money you were counting on that has quietly stopped existing.
Do this week
Call your financial aid office and ask for exactly two numbers: your cost of attendance for this year, and your total non-federal grant and scholarship aid.
Put them next to each other. If the second is within a few hundred dollars of the first, ask the follow-up: will the school reduce its own institutional aid to keep you under the line so your Pell survives? Schools are allowed to do that. Itâs their call, not yours, and some wonât.
Ask before disbursement, because thatâs when the comparison happens. Afterward youâre arguing about a decision thatâs already been made.
If youâre weighing offers from more than one school, ask each of them the same two questions. A slightly smaller scholarship at a school with a higher cost of attendance can leave you with more actual money. Run that math before you commit, and use our education hub for the rest of the aid picture.
Dallas College notes the Education Department âis still finalizing the exact processâ for applying this at disbursement. Translation: the details are still moving, so get your answer in writing and ask again in October.
One more test worth knowing, because itâs separate from all of the above: if your Student Aid Index is $14,790 or higher, twice the maximum Pell, youâre ineligible no matter what outside money you did or didnât win.
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