Home-schoolers in Virginia are now eligible for state financial aid that they were previously not allowed to receive.
The Virginia Guaranteed Assistance Program, which provides need-based scholarships for tuition, fees and books at the state's two- and four-year public institutions, required recipients to have graduated from high school with at least a 2.5 grade-point average.
The state's approximately 30,000 home-schoolers were ineligible for the aid, which offered an average grant of $3,671 in the 2007-08 school year.
Under rules the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia approved this week, home-schoolers may qualify by submitting SAT scores of at least 900 and ACT scores of at least 19.