The Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (CRRSAA) established the approximately $23b Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund II (HEERF II), which allocated funding to institutions of higher education based on the number of each institution’s students with high financial need and each institution’s total student enrollment. Under this metric, Georgetown was allocated approximately $9.3m. Pursuant to the CRRSAA, institutions are obligated to use at least the same amount of funding for emergency student financial aid grants as they were obligated to under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act which, in Georgetown’s case, was approximately $3.055m. The remaining portion of an institution’s CARES Act funding may be used for certain other expenses relating to the disruption of campus operations due to COVID-19. Despite only being required to distribute approximately $3.055m in emergency student financial aid grants, the university allocated a total of $6m of its CRRSAA funding to these student grants.

As a condition to receiving the emergency student financial aid portion of its CRRSAA funding, the university agreed to the terms of the Department of Education a Certification and Agreement in which Georgetown affirmed that, in accordance with the requirements of the CRRSAA, Georgetown will use at least as much as it was obligated to use under the CARES Act to provide emergency financial aid grants to students.

Unlike under the CARES Act, student eligibility under the CRRSAA was not limited only to those students eligible to participate in financial aid programs under Section 484 in Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965. When the university distributed its initial CRRSAA emergency financial aid grants in February 2021, approximately 17,600 students were eligible to receive emergency financial aid grants funded by the CRRSAA.

Each undergraduate student who was eligible for emergency grants under the CRRSAA and whose Estimated Family Contribution (EFC) for the 2020-21 academic year, as calculated by the Office of Student Financial Services (OSFS), was less than $20,000 received between $1,600 and $2,000, with students receiving larger awards within that range as their EFC approached $15,000.

Each graduate and professional student in Main and Medical Campus programs other than the School of Medicine who are eligible for emergency grants under the CRRSAA and whose required contribution to cost of attendance from assets, as calculated by the OSFS, is less than $10,000 received grants of either $250, $500, or $1000, with larger grants distributed to students with lower required contributions to cost of attendance from assets and full-time students.

These initial undergraduate, graduate, and professional distributions were made in early February 2021, with the university reserving additional CRRSAA funds to make follow-on distributions to students whose need was not fully demonstrated by the financial information OSFS relied on in making its initial determinations.

In October 2021, the university made a second broad-based distribution of emergency grants, funded by a combination of funds from the CRRSAA and the American Rescue Plan (ARP), to undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. A total of 1,070 distributions of $700 were made to all CRRSAA/ARP-eligible undergraduate students who with an EFC of $15,000 or less for the 2021-22 academic year, as calculated by OSFS, 522 of which were funded with HEERF II funds. A total of 610 distributions of $1,050 were made to CRRSAA/ARP-eligible graduate and professional students in Main and Medical Campus programs other than the School of Medicine, 2481 of which were funded with HEERF II funds. Exceptional financial need for these students was determined by OSFS using information provided by students via applications for funding, as well as information contained in their FAFSA or International Profile, as applicable, with preference given to students enrolled at least half-time for the Fall 2022 semester. A final round of distributions was made to graduate and professional students in early December 2021, but these were funded entirely by HEERF III funds under the ARP.

Distributions to graduate students at the Law Center and School of Medicine were made based on determinations of exceptional need by each school’s emergency funding committees. The Law Center made initial distributions based on determinations of exceptional need in response to applications submitted by students indicating direct expenses resulting from the disruption of campus operations due to COVID-19, with awards ranging from $700 to $2,600. Subsequent distributions, ranging from $2502 to $1,500, were made to students with exceptional need based on financial information available to the Law Center’s Office of Financial Aid, with awards increasing as a student’s borrowing combined with other financial aid, as a percentage of cost of attendance, approached 100%. The School of Medicine made distributions of $550 based on applications indicating expenses related to the disruption of campus operations due to COVID-19.

As of March 31, 2021, Georgetown had distributed a total of approximately $4.24m in HEERF II emergency student financial aid grants to a total of 4,136 students.  That amount consisted of the $3.055m student portion of Georgetown’s CRRSAA funding and an additional $1.19m, approximately, from the institutional portion of its CRRSAA funding.  Between April 1, 2021 and June 30, 2021, Georgetown distributed nearly $1.13m from its institutional portion in additional HEERF II emergency student financial aid grants to 855 students.  From July 1, 2021 to September 30, 2021, Georgetown distributed an additional $5,000 in total to eight students.  From October 1, 2021 to December 31, 2021, Georgetown distributed approximately $625k in additional HEERF II emergency student financial aid grants to 770 students.  In all, under the CRRSAA, Georgetown made 5,761 individual emergency financial aid grants directly to students totalling$6m.  4,6693 students (1337 undergraduate and 3332 graduate and professional) received CRRSAA distributions between January 1, 2021 and September 30, 2021. Between October 1, 2021 and December 31, 2021, a total of 1,680 students (1,070 undergraduate and 610 graduate and professional) received grants funded by a combination4 of the CRRSAA and the ARP funding, 1,091 of whom had previously received grants funded by either the CARES Act, CRRSAA, or the ARP (817 undergraduate and 274 graduate and professional) and 589 of whom had not (253 undergraduate and 336 graduate and professional).

Additional information on these CRRSAA emergency student financial aid grants can be found on the Revenue and Receivables website.

View Georgetown’s revised quarterly report for the quarter ended March 31, 2021 for the institutional portion of its CRRSAA allocation, which revised its original quarterly report for the quarter ended March 31, 2021.

View Georgetown’s quarterly report for the quarter ended June 30, 2021 for the institutional portion of its CRRSAA allocation.

View Georgetown’s quarterly report for the quarter ended September 30, 2021 for the institutional portion of its CRRSAA allocation.

View Georgetown’s quarterly report for the quarter ended December 31, 2021 for the institutional portion of its CRRSAA allocation.

Updated January 10, 2022

1Note: One of these $1,050 distributions was funded partially by HEERF III funds, due to the pooling of HEERF II and HEERF III funds for this second round of graduate and professional students in Main and Medical Campus programs other than the School of Medicine.

2 Note: One of these $250 disbursements was funded partially by HEERF III funds, due to the pooling of HEERF II and HEERF III funds for certain Law Center disbursements.

3 Note: This total equals less than the sum of the 2021 Q1, Q2, and Q3 student recipients due to certain student grant recipients receiving grants in multiple calendar quarters, thereby not increasing the total number of student recipients.

4 Note: The Q4 distributions were administered using a combination of HEERF II and HEERF III funding, and so information as to which of these recipients were repeat recipients specifically of HEERF II funding is not available.