What happens if you never claim a Pell Grant?

I would talk to your financial aid department about this. This seems like an odd situation to me. If you were eligible for a Pell grant, your school was obligated to disburse it to you. If you paid the charges in cash, this would have put you into a credit balance situation and your school should have disbursed the Pell to you within 14 days of the credit balance appearing on your account. However, you may still be able to receive the grant.

It is true that you cannot use aid from the current award year (2012-13) to pay for a previous year's charges. However, there is such a thing as a retroactive disbursement for a completed period within an award year. You apparently were eligible for aid and completed terms within the 2011-12 Award Year, so you should be able to receive the aid you were eligible for from that year. The Federal Student Aid Handbook (the rulebook for FA administrators) says this:

"Your school must pay a student retroactively for any completed payment periods within the award year if the student was eligible for payment in those periods." FSA HB Vol 3, Chapter 1, pg. 22

The 2011-12 Award Year ended on June 30th, 2012, but I believe a school can still originate a grant for that award year up until the end of September, 2012. I am not an expert on this particular subject, however, so you should explore this with an FA administrator at your school. (Hint: this is an uncommon situation and many lower level administrators will not be familiar with this regulation, so I would ask to see someone with experience, such as the director of the department).

As for your 2012-13 pell grant, you are correct--you can complete the 2012-13 FAFSA up until June 30, 2013. Your school may have deadlines if you want the aid processed before the start of the Fall semester. If you missed those deadlines, you may have to wait, but you would still be eligible to receive it. However, most community colleges are very good at processing aid at the last minute, so you probably won't have a problem receiving your funding on time.

The grant you never took from 2011-2012 is gone. You can't get it back no matter what. You can reapply for 2012-2013, but it may be too late for this fall. While the federal deadline isn't until June 2013, your school's deadline for fall was likely months ago.

at our local community college you have to apply for FAFSA & you also have to apply to their Financial Aid office... otherwise, you won't get aid

The process is that you apply for FAFSA & then to the school & then wait on your Fin Aid Award letter

some schools just don't require a separate in-house application

No, it is not too late to apply for FAFSA 2012-2013... it is too late for your school to apply it to the upcoming Fall semester.. but you would still be able to use it for Spring & maybe even for MiniTerm II this Fall

With your GPA you should also consider apply for scholarships

It may be too late for you to get any retroactive 2011-2012 payments... especially if your school requires Fin Aid application in-house that you did not take care of.. ask your Fin Aid office & see if they have any ideas on what can be done

I will add this... Cali has state aid... and I recall students on here talking about putting in applications for Cali state aid... and the deadline may have already passed.... but, you should ask your Fin Aid office how you apply

Nope, they don't pay the pell grant retroactively.

It's a little late to apply this year, if you have any hopes on receiving it in time for the fall semester. It takes months for an application to work its way through the approval process.

1. See IRS pub 501 and examine if *you* are a stylish or no longer. 2. In case you are no longer a depdendent, then see in case you meet the assessments for claiming them as qualifying children. New principles for 2009 require that you simply be older than your sisters *and* have bigger income than each of your aprents.