Key Points
- The GAO confirms FAFSA simplification met its goals: roughly 9.9 million students were eligible for a Pell Grant in 2024–25, up about 570,000 (6%) from the prior year.
- Most of the new eligibility came from middle-income families. Pell eligibility climbed sharply in the $60,001–$125,000 income range, and the number of students with household incomes of $40,001–$80,000 qualifying for the maximum award more than doubled.
- The share of FAFSA filers who qualified for any Pell rose from 65% to 71%, even though fewer students filed the form because of the bumpy 2024–25 rollout.
A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (PDF File) finds that the redesigned Free Application for Federal Student Aid is doing what Congress intended — pushing more students into the Pell Grant program and qualifying far more of them for the maximum award.
The report examined the first year of the simplified FAFSA and found significant gains in eligibility, with the largest jumps concentrated among middle-income households that historically received little or no need-based federal aid.
About 9.9 million students who completed the FAFSA were eligible for a Pell Grant in school year 2024–25, an increase of roughly 570,000 students, or 6% over the prior year.
Eligibility for the maximum Pell award of $7,395 grew even faster: about 7.9 million students qualified, a 31% increase representing roughly 1.9 million additional students.
The GAO attributes these results to the FUTURE Act of 2019 and the FAFSA Simplification Act of 2020, which together reshaped the application and the underlying aid formula.
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Simpler Form Allows For Easier Completion
The new FAFSA cut the number of questions from more than 100 to as few as 18 for some filers, automatically imported tax data from the IRS, and replaced the Expected Family Contribution with a new metric called the Student Aid Index. Congress also raised the income protection allowance, lifted the threshold for reporting assets from $50,000 to $60,000 in adjusted gross income, and created automatic Pell pathways tied to the federal poverty level.
Under the new rules, students whose household income falls at or below 175% or 225% of the federal poverty level (depending on dependency status and family size) automatically qualify for the maximum Pell. A second set of thresholds, ranging from 275% to 400% of poverty, automatically qualifies students for the minimum Pell. The minimum award rose to $740 in 2024–25.
The GAO also notes that incarcerated students are again eligible for Pell aid after a decades-long exclusion, and that students who are homeless or in foster care no longer have to reverify their status each year.
Middle Income Families Find Support
The headline finding for families: simplification did the most for households that previously felt squeezed out of need-based aid. We've long been advocates of always filling out the FAFSA, but FAFSA Simplification removed an additional barrier to making this happen.
At least 350,000 more students with household incomes between $60,001 and $125,000 became Pell-eligible in 2024–25 — accounting for at least 61% of the total 570,000-student increase. Within that band, the share of FAFSA filers who qualified rose from 38% to at least 55%.
The picture is even more striking for the maximum award. The number of students with household incomes between $40,001 and $80,000 who qualified for the full $7,395 Pell Grant more than doubled, from about 554,000 to at least 1.3 million. The GAO credits the expanded automatic maximum Pell criteria for much of this growth.
Lower-income students still make up the bulk of Pell recipients. Of the 9.9 million eligible students in 2024–25, about 7.4 million (roughly 75%) had household incomes below $60,001, and nearly all FAFSA filers in that bracket qualified.
What This Means For Households
For families weighing college affordability, there's a few key takeaways here.
Average awards moved up. The average Pell award across all eligible students rose by $278 from 2023–24 to 2024–25, driven largely by the surge in maximum-award qualifiers. Because more than half of eligible students qualify for the full amount in both years, the median award stayed at the full $7,395.
The asset rules changed. Roughly 2.4 million more students reported no assets on the 2024–25 FAFSA, partly because the threshold for reporting assets rose and partly because households below the automatic maximum Pell income criteria are not required to report assets at all. Among students who reported no assets, 91% were Pell-eligible and 85% qualified for the maximum.
The "sibling discount" went away, but most affected families gained anyway. The new formula no longer accounts for the number of family members in college, a feature that under the old formula reduced a student's expected contribution when a sibling was also enrolled. Despite that change, 60% of students with another family member in college qualified for Pell in 2024–25, up from 55%, and 77% of those qualified for the maximum, up from 48%. Other formula changes more than offset the loss for most households.
There are exceptions. The GAO modeled a hypothetical family of four with two children in college, $10,000 in assets, and $95,000 in household income — a family that may have qualified for a Pell Grant under the old rules but would not under the new ones. A similar family with $70,000 in income, however, would qualify for a larger award than before.
What Happens Next
The GAO is careful to note what the numbers do not capture. Fewer students completed the FAFSA in 2024–25 because of well-documented rollout delays, so eligibility totals are likely depressed relative to a normal cycle. The data also predates changes made under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which restored small business and family farm asset exemptions on the 2026–27 FAFSA and could narrow Pell eligibility for some students with high household assets but low incomes.
It's important to remember, though, that the maximum Pell still covers less of the cost of college than it once did.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the maximum award covered about 80% of tuition, fees, and room and board at a public four-year college in the mid-1970s, around 40% in the early 1990s, and roughly 30% in 2022–23.
Larger eligibility numbers expand access but it does not, on its own, restore the award's historical buying power.
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Editor: Colin Graves
Robert Farrington is the founder of The College Investor and is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading voices on student loan debt and saving for college. He holds an MBA from UC San Diego Rady School of Management and has spent over 15 years researching, writing, and advising on student loans, 529 plans, financial aid programs, and saving and investing for young professionals.
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