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Illinois National Guard Grant Award Letter

Did you apply for the Illinois National Guard Grant (ING)? Were you at all confused by the award dates? Did you have issues getting a clear answer from representatives on information your award letter stated? Then welcome (or welcome back) to the blog “Soldier to Student”. In this post I want to talk about a problem I encountered with the Illinois National Guard Grant. I applied for the grant in August when I switched from active-duty to the guard. It also was a little over a week before the first day of school so I figured the timing would work pretty good. My original plan was to use the Illinois National Guard Grant for my undergrad and save my Illinois Veterans Grant for my masters. Well when I received my Illinois National Guard Grant award letter, the date did not make any sense to me. The letter began by stating “The Illinois Student Assistance Commission (ISAC) has determined that you are eligible for the 2024-25 Illinois National Guard (ING) Grant Program for a portion of the academic year.” At the end of the letter it said my eligibility begins on or after 08/10/2025. I called ISAC confused by why it would say I am eligible at the beginning of the letter if the date listed at the end was not until roughly the start of the following school year. The representative told me she was not sure because based on the letters' phrasing she thought I was eligible. A few weeks later I got a call from my school's financial aid office regarding the award letter. She explained you have to be in the National Guard for a year to be eligible for benefits and the portion of the 2024-2025 term they were referring to was the one week (August 10-17 2025) which is considered to be the 2024-2025 school term. It all made sense after hearing that but for the weeks before that, ISAC could not give me a straight answer as to why the date was August 2025. I hope that if anyone else is going through this problem, this post can help give them some clarity. Please leave me any questions in the comments and I would love to answer them.

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