Detailed findings from the first stage of the Basic Educational Opportunity Grant (BEOG) quality control project are presented. For the 4,500 students selected as representative of the BEOG, or Pell Grant, recipient population as of Fall 1980, data were collected from: federal tax returns, interviews with student recipients and their parents, tax assessors' statements regarding home values, student records on file in college financial aid offices, and interviews with financial aid administrators describing the characteristics and administrative practices at their institutions. Total dollar error is estimated to be $275 per recipient, or $650 million of the $2.2 billion awarded to the 2.36 million recipients represented by the study sample. The $650 million in dollar error was composed of $526 million in overawards to 50 percent of the recipients and $124 million in underawards to 21 percent of the recipients. Approximately 19 percent of the recipients should have been ineligible for any award, and all errors related to institutional procedures resulted in $181 million in net overaward. Information is provided on recipient error, data entry error, institutional error, error-prone profiling, and BEOG validation. Comparisons are also presented of 1978-1979 and 1980-1981 error. Appended materials include responses to questionnaire items for the student questionnaire, parent questionnaire, student record abstract, and institutional interview; and a discussion of experimental bias and implications for campus-based aid. (SW)