Federal Grants for College Students

• Author: Monica Jackson
• Posted: 2023-11-18

Despite our improving economy, the annual tuition for both America's private and public colleges and universities continues to rise every single year. You can start to defray these costs with federal tuition grants. Federal tuition grants act as one of the only ways that you can pay for college without needing to pay an entity back. The first thing you will need to do is examine all of the available grants and the requirements that they have. What you will want to do is locate awards for which you meet the criteria and fill out these applications.

You can see some of the popular tuition grants below:

Grant for Academic Competitiveness

This grant will give you an award of $750 for college freshmen and a $1300 award for college sophomores who completed academically competitive programs of study and who also have received Federal Pell Grants as part of their financial award package.

The Federal Pell Grant

If you receive a Federal Pell Grant, you could get an award of up to $5,550 in one academic year. Only undergraduate students can receive Federal Pell Grants as part of their financial aid package.

The Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant

If you get a Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant, you could get between $100 and $4,000 for your financial aid package. To get this grant, you will need to demonstrate financial problems.

Federal Institutional Grants

Many colleges and universities in the United States have their methods for awarding financial aid to their students and applicants. If you would like to learn which grants you can get in your package of financial assistance, talk to representatives in your school's office of financial aid. If you plan on applying to different schools, speak to a representative of financial assistance at each school to which you will send an application.

Service Grants for Children of Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans

If you have a military parent or guardian who lost their life in Iraq or Afghanistan after 9/11, you can get up to $5,550 in a college grant. This grant can become very useful for students who may have trouble paying for college due to the fact that they may live in a single parent home. However, unlike Federal Pell Grants, you will not have to demonstrate an extreme financial need to receive this grant.

The SMART Grant

While some college students do everything they can to coast through their studies, others buckle down and do every assignment that gets put in front of them. Hard working college students need all the help they can get when it comes to keeping up the excellent work they do in their classes. For this reason, the federal government does a lot of work to ensure that high-achieving students have the means to pay for their much-deserved college education. When hard-working, intelligent college students can concentrate on their studies due to a grant that they received, everybody wins.

If you reached your junior or senior year in college, you could receive a "SMART" grant of up to $4,000. To get this grant, you must have earned at least a 3.0 GPA and majored in one of the fields specified by the guidelines of the award.

The TEACH Grant

Many American college students decide to major in education for a variety of reasons. What all these education majors have in common is that every one of them wants to help influence the minds of young people by teaching school subjects in a way that opens the mind of their students. If you ask the average parent of the school-age child, they would tell you that they don't just need more teachers. They need more teachers that engage with their students in a kind, empathetic way while still teaching them what they need to know.

If you study education and are willing to spend four years working in a low-income school, you can receive $4,000 a year after you graduate. Instead of demonstrating financial distress, grant recipients will have to agree to the terms of the contract.

No one will argue that it's hard to pay for college. But if you research your grant options and apply for your best chances, you can find that paying for school can become a bit less stressful.