Although student loans and student grants for college may seem like similar concepts, there is one important difference between them: Loans have to be repaid once a student graduates, but grants do not. In order to be deemed eligible for grant consideration, a student will have to prove to the body in charge of bestowing the grant that he or she indeed meets all relevant criteria. There are no general criteria that are relevant to all grants - although some, like, for instance, the required grade point average, are fairly common - and criteria can range from a student's ethnicity and whether they belong to a minority group to whether any of their relatives served in the armed forces and whether they are single parents. Grants are usually categorized according to various factors including, among other things, the bestowing body, the student group the grants are available for, the schools the grants will be accepted by and the professional qualifications the grants can be used to pay for. As far as bestowing bodies are concerned, most grants are offered by the government - or government-affiliated organizations - and the most common types of government grants include the Pell Grant, which is intended to benefit lower income households, and the various Federal and State grants. A large percentage of the available grants are tailored specifically to meet the needs of minority students, and targeted minority groups are generally divided into groups based on ethnicity (including African American, Hispanic and Native American) and groups based on non-ethnic factors like learning disabilities and / or physical impairments. Grants are also divided according to school-type, and here, the available grants are those relevant to, among others, Catholic schools, private schools and undergraduate schools. Finally, grants can be tailored to suit particular professions, and grants specific to law school, medical school, beauty school and Cosmetology school are all on offer to students interested in following careers in these particular fields. Student grants for college are available to most students - and for most career choices - and it will only take a small amount of online research for a student to find that perfect grant.