Assistance program
TRIO Talent Search
$1.4 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Office of Postsecondary Education, Education, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 84.044
- What it does
- To identify qualified disadvantaged youths with potential for postsecondary education; to encourage them in completing secondary school and in enrolling in programs of postsecondary education; to publicize the availability of, and facilitate the application for, student financial aid; and to increase the number of secondary and postsecondary school dropouts who reenter and complete an educational program.
- Who benefits
- Individuals residing in the target area or attending a target school who have potential for education at the postsecondary level and who can benefit from one or more of the services provided by the project. Two-thirds must be low-income individuals who are also potential first generation college students. Project participants must be between 11 and 27 years old (exceptions allowed). Required low-income criteria for participants are stated in application materials.
- Who applies
- Institutions of higher education (IHEs), public and private agencies and organizations including community-based organizations with experience in serving disadvantaged youth, combinations of such institutions, agencies and organizations, and as appropriate to the purposes of the program, secondary schools.
- Authorized by
- Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended, Title IV, Part A, Subpart 2, Chapter 1, Section 402B, 20 U.S.C. 1070a-12.
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments