For students who wish to venture outside their home state for college and not pay steep prices, tuition waivers are one way to fill the financial gap.
Tuition waivers, sometimes referred to as nonresident tuition exemptions, allow out-of-state students to pay tuition at in-state rates. These waivers can help reduce costs, since out-of-state tuition and fees on average are nearly 2.3 times more than the in-state rate. In fact, the average cost of tuition and fees for the 2017–2018 school year was $9,528 for state residents at public colleges and slightly double that amount for out-of-state students at $21,632, according to data submitted to U.S. News in an annual survey.
Students with certain circumstances, such as those who are senior citizens or dependents of disabled U.S. military veterans, typically qualify for some form of tuition waiver. But there are other instances when an institution or state will grant an out-of-state tuition waiver to nonresident students. For instance, under the California Education Code, nonresident students who attended a California high school and graduated with a diploma or equivalent qualify for exemption from out-of-state tuition rates.
[Read: What You Need to Know About College Tuition Costs.]
A few public university systems use tuition waivers as an enticement for meritorious out-of-state students, experts say. Many of these institutions are in Florida, Texas and Georgia, and the waivers are designed by their respective governing boards.
“With Georgia Board of Regents, each campus gets a certain amount of waivers, and they select how they want to use them. So it’s almost like a scholarship that they’re awarded this many waivers, and they decide the criteria on who to give it to,” says Kristen Moon, a college adviser and founder of Atlanta-based Moon Prep, a college admissions consulting firm.
At Kennesaw State University in Georgia, for instance, out-of-state students who excel academically and submit a 300-word essay can qualify for a waiver that can cover up to 100 percent of the out-of-state tuition price. For the 2017-2018 school year, the school’s Out-of-State Waiver and Scholarship can decrease out-of-state tuition and fees — $21,158 — to nearly a third of the sticker price.
While tuition waivers are one way to reduce out-of-state tuition costs, many public National Universities offer merit-based awards to out-of-state students, often in the form of a presidential scholarship. In some instances, these scholarships can bring the cost of tuition and fees to a price lower than the advertised in-state tuition level. At the University of Alabama, which charged $10,780 for in-state tuition and fees in 2017-2018, some of its out-of-state merit scholarships exceed the amount needed to offset the difference between the in-state and out-of-state rates. A nonresident student who qualifies as a Presidential Scholar at UA receives $25,000 a year. While limited in number, this award is given to students who score a 33 or higher on the ACT or 1490 or higher on the SAT and hold at least a 3.5 GPA.
[See: 10 Best Value Public Colleges for Out-of-State Students.]
To receive merit dollars at a highly ranked public university as an out-of-state student, whether it’s in the form of a tuition waiver or academic scholarship, a student will most likely need to be within the top 5 to 10 percent of their incoming class, Moon says. “It’s much easier to get a scholarship at a private university than a public university as an out-of-state student,” she says.
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Schools That Offer Merit-Based Tuition Waivers to Out-of State Students originally appeared on usnews.com
