Southern Adventist University Scholarships (2026–2027)

📅 2027–2028 Planning Note: The costs below reflect the most recently published figures (2026–2027). Universities typically finalize the next year’s rates in the spring, and we’ll update this page once official 2027–2028 numbers are released.

Planning tip: At large public universities, tuition, fees, and housing usually increase modestly each year (often in the 2–5% range). For early budgeting, families may want to plan for roughly $1,000–$1,500 more in-state or $2,000–$3,000 more out-of-state in total direct costs once new rates are published.

Average Federal Net Price: $25,374 — this is what families actually paid after grants and scholarships (no loans), based on the most recent federal data. Your specific cost could be significantly lower or higher depending on your financial aid eligibility and merit scholarships. New to Net Price & SAI? Read our guide.

📌 Regional Tuition & Waiver Options

The $25,374 average net price above comes from federal IPEDS reporting, and federal data runs about two years behind. It was measured against a sticker price considerably lower than today’s, and it covers all aid recipients rather than just incoming freshmen.

Southern publishes its own current numbers, and they tell a friendlier story. Against a $40,300 list price, the school reports an average of $21,200 per year in free aid (scholarships, grants, and gifts) for incoming freshmen. After a typical campus job and loans, they put the typical remaining out-of-pocket cost at $11,800 a year.

Parent translation: use the federal number when you are comparing Southern against other schools apples-to-apples, because everyone reports it the same way. Use Southern’s own cost calculator when you are building your actual budget. And remember that $11,800 figure assumes your student works on campus and you borrow, so it is not the same thing as a check you write.

Southern is private, so there is no in-state or out-of-state rate to chase and no residency waiver to apply for. A family in Oregon pays the same posted tuition as a family in Collegedale. What Southern offers instead is the Renewable Southern Union Scholarship, worth $2,000 a year to students from Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. It exists because those states hand out generous grants you forfeit by crossing a state line to attend a private school in Tennessee.

🧮 Run the Formula Before You Read Anything Else

Southern publishes the exact math behind its main scholarship. Do this at the kitchen table tonight:

1. Take your student’s cumulative high school GPA and multiply it by 1,000. (GPA caps at 4.0, so a 4.3 weighted GPA counts as 4.0.)
2. Take their best ACT composite and multiply it by 100.
3. Add the two numbers together.

A 3.6 GPA with a 24 ACT gives you 3,600 plus 2,400, or 6,000 points. That lands on the Dean tier at $4,000 a year.

Only have an SAT score? Call Admissions at 1.800.SOUTHERN and they will convert it to an ACT equivalent for the formula.

⚠️ The Superscore Trap

This is the single most expensive detail on this page. Southern superscores the ACT and SAT for the academic scholarship grid, so mixing your best section scores across test dates works fine for the $2,000 through 50-percent-tuition tiers.

The Renewable Full Tuition Scholarship is different. That one requires a 34 ACT composite or a 1490 SAT total from one single test date. Superscoring is not allowed.

So a student sitting on a superscored 34 gets the half-tuition award, worth over $45,000 across four years. A student who hit 34 in one sitting gets full tuition, worth over $95,000. Same score on paper, roughly $50,000 apart. If your student is scoring 32 or 33 in single sittings, keep testing through March. Southern recommends taking the test no later than March 1 so the testing organization has time to score and send.

💵 Two Awards That Stack On Top, Automatically

Most families only look at the academic grid and stop. Two more automatic awards layer on top of it with no extra paperwork, and Southern designed them so that almost everybody catches one:

• Renewable Lightbearer ($2,000/yr): if your student attended a public school, home school, or a private high school not run by an Adventist organization for two or more years.
• Renewable Southern Union ($2,000/yr): if you have lived in KY, NC, SC, GA, AL, MS, or FL for at least a year before enrolling, and your student has a 21 ACT, a 1060 SAT, or a 3.0 GPA. Note that is an “or,” not an “and.”

A Georgia student out of a public high school with a 3.6 GPA and a 24 ACT collects the Dean award plus both of these. That is $8,000 a year, not $4,000. Adventist academy graduates do not get Lightbearer, but they become eligible for the High School Leadership Scholarship instead, which public school students cannot receive.

If your student earned College Board National Recognition status (Hispanic, African American, Indigenous, or Rural and Small Town), Southern pays 50 percent of tuition for four years. That beats every named tier on the academic grid. It replaces the academic scholarship rather than stacking with it, so you take whichever is larger, and for nearly everyone this one wins by a wide margin. The Rural and Small Town program is the one families overlook most, and it is purely geographic. We cover it in Hidden Gems.

That is not a knock. It is a different design philosophy, and for a lot of families it is the better one.

Southern’s combined scholarships and awards cannot exceed tuition (for 12 to 16 hours), general fees, room rent, and a capped amount for books and food. If your student holds one of the full-tuition awards, the ceiling drops further: combined Southern scholarships will not exceed tuition plus the general fee alone, and cannot be applied to lab fees. Scholarships also only apply to fall and winter semesters, not summer, and require full-time enrollment on the Collegedale campus.

❓ Competitive Scholarship FAQs

Is there any scholarship at Southern with an interview or finalist weekend?
No. Southern does not hold competitive scholarship interviews or finalist events for its institutional awards. Everything is either formula-based or, in the case of Southern Scholars and the SVAD Create competition, reviewed on written and portfolio submissions without an in-person round.

Is Southern a Stamps Scholars partner?
No. Southern is not a current Stamps Scholarship partner institution.

Is Southern a QuestBridge partner?
No. If your student is a QuestBridge candidate, Southern is not on the match list.

Does Southern have a National Merit package?
Yes, and it is a good one. National Merit Finalists receive full tuition for four years, renewable on a 2.0 GPA. Semifinalists and PSAT Commended Scholars do not get a separate award; they are evaluated on the regular Renewable Academic Scholarship criteria. Note that Southern’s full-tuition awards cover tuition only, so a Finalist should still budget roughly $11,400 a year for the general fee, housing, and food.

My student is a strong writer with a mediocre test score. Where does that get us?
Honestly, not far on the merit side at Southern. The academic ladder does not read essays. The place that writing does count is the Southern Scholars Honors Program, where admission turns on two evaluated essays, and it carries $7,500 in scholarship money across the sophomore, junior, and senior years.

Should we still chase outside scholarships?
Yes, but call Student Finance at Southern first and ask specifically how an outside award will be treated. Because outside grants are applied before institutional money, there are scenarios where winning a local scholarship shifts money around rather than reducing your bill. Ask before your student spends fifteen hours on an application.

🧠 Parent Strategy: Southern’s Money Lives in Three Places

Unlike schools that run everything through one scholarship portal, Southern scatters its smaller awards across three completely separate channels. Skip any one of them and you never find out what you missed.

1. The FAFSA is the only door to the endowed scholarships. No separate form exists. File it with school code 003518 and Student Finance notifies you if you qualify.
2. Your Application Status Page is where the Church Leadership Scholarship application lives, after you are admitted.
3. The phone is the only way to reach the performance money. Southern publishes no amounts, criteria, or deadlines for Gym-Masters, Engage Worship, or School of Music awards. You have to call.

Parent translation: the automatic money finds you. Everything on this page has to be gone after, and most of it has a cap on how many students get it.

☀️ Choosing Your Summer: Camp or Literature Evangelism

Southern will pay for a summer of ministry work, but you can only collect one summer ministry scholarship, and Southern pays out whichever is larger. So this is a real decision, not a both-and.

• Summer Camp: $185 per full week worked at an Adventist conference camp, capped at $2,220. That is twelve full weeks to max it. Predictable, and you can calculate it before you accept the job. Partial weeks do not count, so a camp built on full-week sessions is worth more than one with scattered scheduling.
• Literature Evangelism: Southern matches 50 percent of your summer earnings, capped at $2,000. To hit the full match you need to earn $4,000. Higher ceiling, but entirely dependent on how your summer goes.

Ten weeks at camp is $1,850, guaranteed. Literature evangelism can beat that, but only with a strong summer. If your student has never done it and cannot predict their earnings, camp is the safer number. Either way, confirm before you leave that your director or organization has actually reported to Student Finance, because Southern verifies at the end of the summer and unreported weeks do not get paid.

⏰ Three Awards With Real Caps on How Many Students Get Them

• Church Leadership: a limited number are available. Southern begins notifying selected students November 1 and continues monthly until either the April 1 deadline or the maximum number of recipients is reached, whichever comes first. April 1 is a priority deadline, not a safe one. Applying in November beats applying in March.
• High School Leadership: each Adventist academy may nominate up to nine students. This runs through your school, not through you, so nobody at Southern is checking whether your student was class treasurer. Call the academy’s principal or guidance office in the fall of senior year and ask directly whether names have been submitted.
• THRIVE: participation is limited to 140 students per year across the whole university. Apply at southern.edu/thrive as soon as you have a Southern login.

The National Recognition Program award. Half of tuition for four years, renewable on a 2.0 GPA. There is no Southern application; you earn the status through the College Board based on PSAT or AP performance combined with your background or the community your school serves. The Rural and Small Town program is purely geographic and catches families completely off guard. If your student’s high school serves a small town, check whether it qualifies. This award replaces the academic ladder award rather than adding to it, and for nearly everyone it is the bigger number.

THRIVE. Most parents assume it is income-based and stop reading. Being first-generation qualifies you on its own with no income test at all, as does a documented disability. The $1,000 a year is real, but the individualized academic support, coaching, and access to scholarship applications not open to other students is worth considerably more over four years.

❓ Hidden Gems FAQ

Do I need a separate application for the endowed scholarships?
No. Filing the FAFSA is the entire application. Southern’s Student Finance Office notifies students who qualify. Some endowed funds are awarded in collaboration with academic departments, so once your student has declared a major it is worth emailing that department directly and asking whether they hold any donor funds. Departmental money is often the least advertised aid on any campus.

How does the Three-Way Scholarship Match actually work?
Your local church contributes, your conference contributes, and Southern matches up to $250 a semester or $500 a year for full-time students. Enrolled in six to eleven credits instead? The match caps at $125 a semester. Under six credits, you are not eligible. The timing catches people out: Southern only applies its match after the church and conference funds have arrived in full. Start the conversation with your church treasurer well before the semester begins.

Is any of this open to international students?
The Three-Way Scholarship Match is, explicitly, which makes it disproportionately valuable if your student is coming from overseas and locked out of federal aid. One disqualifier to check first: if a parent works for an Adventist institution and your student receives an educational subsidy through that employer, you are not eligible for the match.

What is the SVAD Create Scholarship, and how hard is it to win?
It is a portfolio competition run by the School of Visual Art and Design, worth up to $8,000 paid as $2,000 a year. Categories are Animation, Film, Fine Art, and Graphic Design. Southern awards multiple of these, which meaningfully improves the odds compared to most portfolio scholarships. The GPA bar is deliberately low at 2.5 because the portfolio is what is being judged. The written portion is where applications separate: Southern asks which piece is your weakest and why, and a defensive answer reads badly. Pick a real weakness and show that you understand it. Any AI or stock image use must be disclosed and explained, and undisclosed use is the kind of thing that ends an application. The most recent cycle closed April 15, so confirm the current year’s date with the school before planning around it.

Can current Southern students get these?
Several, yes. Literature Evangelism, Summer Camp, Student Missionary, the Three-Way Match, THRIVE, and the endowed scholarships are all open to continuing undergraduates. The leadership awards and Lightbearer are entry-point awards tied to your high school situation.

Should we take a mission year for the scholarship?
No. The Student Missionary and Task Force award is $1,500 one time, which does not come close to offsetting a year of lost academic progress. If your student was already considering it, the money makes coming back a little easier. Talk to the Chaplain’s Office at 423.236.2787 early, because placements are arranged well in advance. There is also a separately named Jerry Lee Holt Student Missionary Scholarship linked from Southern’s aid page, and it is not clear from the main page whether it is the same award, an addition, or an alternative. Ask directly.