Dear Colleague:
On January 31, 2022, in accordance with the provisions of the Master Calendar specified in section 482 of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended (HEA), we published the 2022-2023 Federal Pell Grant Payment and Disbursement Schedules as Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) GEN-22-03. We stated that if subsequent Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 appropriations legislation modified the current maximum award, we would publish revised 2022-2023 Federal Pell Grant Payment and Disbursement Schedules.
On March 15, 2022, the President signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022 (P.L. 117-103). Under this new appropriations legislation, the maximum Pell Grant award will increase from $6,495 to $6,895 for the 2022-2023 award year, and the corresponding maximum Pell Grant eligible expected family contribution (EFC) will increase from 5,846 to 6,206. Under section 401(b)(4) of the HEA, the minimum Pell Grant award is ten percent of the maximum award amount for the award year. Because we use midpoints in both the EFC columns and the cost of attendance (COA) rows in constructing the schedules, the actual minimum scheduled award amount for the 2022-2023 award year will be $692.
Enclosed with this letter are REVISED PDF and Excel versions of the Payment and Disbursement Schedules for determining Federal Pell Grant awards for the 2022-2023 award year (July 1, 2022, through June 30, 2023) for full-time, three-quarter-time, half-time, and less-than-half-time students. For better readability, we are continuing our practice of presenting the PDF version in multiple pages for each of these schedules. All 2022-2023 Federal Pell Grant awards must be based on the enclosed REVISED schedules.
Schools are reminded that a student may be eligible to receive Pell Grant funds for up to 150 percent of the student’s Pell Grant scheduled award for an award year. To be eligible for the additional Pell Grant funds, the student must be otherwise eligible to receive Pell Grant funds for the payment period and must be enrolled at least as a half-time student, as defined in 34 CFR § 668.2(b), in the payment period(s) for which the student receives the additional Pell Grant funds in excess of 100 percent of the student’s Pell Grant scheduled award. For additional information, see Dear Colleague Letter GEN-17-06.
Moreover, in using the attached schedules for awarding a Federal Pell Grant to a student, the full nine-month EFC must always be used regardless of the student’s actual period of attendance. The Title IV COA to be used is always based on the costs for a full-time student for a full academic year, regardless of the actual enrollment status or actual time the student will be enrolled during the award year. It is also important to note that the statutory restrictions of using only certain cost components in constructing a COA in some circumstances still apply. For example, for a less-than-half-time student, the COA includes only cost components for tuition and fees, books, supplies, transportation, room and board for a limited period, and dependent care expenses.
For more information on these COA restrictions, please refer to Volume 3, Chapter 2, of the Federal Student Aid Handbook.
Also, note that a student’s eligibility to receive a Federal Pell Grant award may be limited by section 401(c)(5) of the HEA, which sets a lifetime Pell Grant eligibility limit of 12 semesters (or its equivalent). Institutions should review information on Pell Grant eligibility determinations and the Lifetime Eligibility Used (LEU) limit posted on our Information for Financial Aid Professionals (IFAP) website. For more information on the LEU limitation, see Dear Colleague Letter GEN-13-14 and Volume 3, Chapter 3 of the Federal Student Aid Handbook.
In future electronic announcements, we will provide institutions with important information about system, web, and software modifications that will reflect the revised 2022-2023 Pell Grant Payment and Disbursement Schedules. These include changes to the Central Processing System (CPS), the Institutional Student Information Record (ISIR) Analysis Tool, the Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) System, and the EDExpress for Windows software.
We appreciate your patience through this process and your continued support in making Federal Pell Grant Program assistance available to students.
Sincerely,
Richard Cordray
Chief Operating Officer
Federal Student Aid
Attachments
2022-2023 Federal Pell Grant Payment and Disbursement Schedules in PDF Format, 16 Pages, 373KB *
2022-2023 Federal Pell Grant Payment and Disbursement Schedules in Excel Format, 200KB
* For an accessible version of this Excel document, download the associated PDF, 2022–2023 Federal Pell Grant Payment and Disbursement Schedules.