Bright Spots for Scholarships
(Timothy Murphy for USN&WR)
Former Rhode Island Sen. Claiborne Pell
1. Good News for Low-Income Students
The amount of money you can get from the single biggest college grant program in the country, the federal government's Pell grant, will jump dramatically this fall. The maximum grant, which generally goes to students with incomes below about $20,000 a year, will rise by $619, or 13 percent, to $5,350. Those from families earning enough so that they qualify for only the minimum Pell grant--typically those with annual incomes of about $45,000 to $50,000--will get $976 this fall, up from $890 last year.