Get free money

You may have got a surprise in the mail this year. Upon opening that fateful letter that told you how much student loan funding you will receive, you might have found yourself the recipient of a non-repayable grant that you never asked for. If the free money seemed to good to be true, fear not: the brand new Canada Student Grant program kicked off in August 2009, and it means you’ll receive extra dough you don’t have to pay back later.

The 2009 fall semester brought big changes to federal student aid—including the new grant program, the scrapping of the Millennium Scholarship Foundation (the previous source of national bursaries and scholarships), and a new Repayment Assistance program to help student loan borrowers who are having trouble repaying their debts after graduation. If you’re one of the 350,000 students who borrow from the government each year, these changes affect you.

Since Aug. 1, when students apply for a national student loan, they are automatically considered for a grant as well. Full-time students deemed to be from low-income families receive an extra $250 per month; those from middle-income families receive an extra $100 per month, paid out at the beginning of each semester. (Information about family income levels, as well as the new grant and loan-repayment schemes, is available at canlearn.ca.)

According to Katherine Giroux-Bougard, national chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students, an important distinction between the previous bursary program and the new grant program is that grant funding is determined according to family income rather than “need” (expenses minus resources). So no matter whether students have savings from their summer job or borrowed money from an uncle, they will get the grant as long as their family’s income is low enough.

Take this example: student A is from a low-income family and, after subtracting his meagre savings from his total university costs, he needs $3,500. He will receive $2,000 in grants and $1,500 in student loans. Student B is also from a low-income family and, having sold her car and worked her butt off during the summer, she needs only $1,400. She will receive a $2,000 grant and won’t have to take out student loans. If students qualify, they get the grant—simple as that.