Pell Grant recipients experience patterns of educational success similar to non-beneficiaries of the federal government’s grant aid program, according to a study released by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) on Tuesday.

The study, “A Profile of Successful Pell Grant Recipients: Time to Bachelor’s Degree and Early Graduate School Enrollment,” found no measurable differences between recipients and non-recipients in the percentage of those who enrolled in a graduate program within one year after college.

“It’s expected that people might be surprised to learn that students who use a Pell Grant are no less likely to get on to graduate school than those who didn’t use a Pell Grant,” said Tom Weko, associate commissioner of postsecondary studies at NCES. “It’s actually kind of counterintuitive.”

The study examined the time it took recipients to compete a bachelor’s degree and the period between college graduation and graduate school enrollment. The study specified  early graduate school enrollment as enrolling in a graduate program within a year of receiving a bachelor’s degree. The data for the report derived from the “2000-01 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study,” which represents a sample of college graduates from all 50 states and Puerto Rico.

Pell Grant recipients tended to have strikingly different socioeconomic and family backgrounds that have often been factors among students who have lower graduation rates. Recipients were more likely to be non-White and come from low-income households. They are also more likely to come from a non-English-speaking home as well as be older and more likely to be single parents than non-grant recipients.

Among Pell Grant recipients who have earned bachelor’s degrees, the study found that, although recipients had a longer median time to degree than non-recipients, Pell Grant recipients received degrees in a shorter time when researchers used multivariate analysis, which controlled for several variables concurrently.