King University Scholarships (2026–2027)
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Last Updated on August 6, 2026- Tuition, housing, and average family net price
- Automatic merit ranges and qualifier benchmarks
- Flagship and hidden-gem awards
- Honors and stacking strategy
📊 Admissions Snapshot
- Acceptance Rate: ~100%
- Middle 50% ACT: 23
- Middle 50% SAT: 1002
- Average GPA: 3.5
King University sits on 135 acres in Bristol, Tennessee, right where the state line runs down the middle of Main Street. It is small, Presbyterian-affiliated, founded in 1867, and it admits almost everyone who applies. That last part matters more than it sounds. At most schools we cover, the first question is whether your student can get in. At King, the answer is almost certainly yes, so the entire conversation shifts to a different question: what is this actually going to cost us?
That question is harder to answer at King than it should be, and not because anyone is hiding anything. King awards its main merit scholarship off high school GPA alone, with no application and no essay, but it does not publish the GPA-to-dollars chart anywhere on its website. The only way to see your number before an offer letter arrives is to run King’s Net Price Calculator. If you do one thing after reading this page, do that.
Comparing multiple schools? Try the Scholarship Tool to search by GPA, test scores, and state →
📌 King University at a Glance
- In-state and out-of-state families are shopping from different menus. King charges one tuition rate to everyone, so there is no residency discount to chase. But the one guaranteed full-tuition award here, the King Commitment Scholarship, is closed to out-of-state students permanently. Non-Tennessee families get a flat $2,000 grant instead.
- “Full tuition” does not mean “full ride.” The King Commitment covers tuition only. Housing and food run about $11,600 a year on top of it. Budget for that.
- Outside scholarships can shrink your King award, not add to it. The Commitment is a last-dollar award. Win $3,000 from a local civic club and King may simply reduce its own contribution by $3,000. There is a workaround if you live on campus, and we explain it below.
- Taking an athletic scholarship cancels nearly everything else. Athletic recipients keep only the Academic and Honors scholarships. Every other King award disappears. Price both paths before your student signs.
- There is no published merit chart. Any specific dollar figure you find on a scholarship-listing site did not come from King. Run the Net Price Calculator and then call financial aid to confirm what it tells you.
- Test scores you see quoted for King are third-party estimates. King publishes no Common Data Set, and the aggregators disagree with each other. King is test-optional, and scores play no role in the merit formula, so this matters less here than almost anywhere else.
FAQ
Is this college test-optional? Yes — King University is test-optional.
What is the middle 50% ACT/SAT? ACT: 23; SAT: 1002.
Average net price? About $22,347/year after aid.
Does this school use waivers/reciprocity? No — private school; same rate for all.
King University Financial Aid, Scholarships and Grants: https://www.king.edu/admissions/financial-aid/scholarships-and-grants/
CollegeScorecard / Admissions: https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/
💰 Cost of Attendance at King University 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.
| Category (2026–2027) | In-State | Out-of-State |
|---|---|---|
| Tuition & Mandatory Fees (2 semesters) | $38,890 | $38,890 |
| Housing & Meals (typical) | $11,600 | $11,600 |
| Total (Direct Costs) | $50,490 | $50,490 |
Average Federal Net Price: $22,347 — 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
King charges one tuition rate no matter where you live, so there is no out-of-state premium to negotiate away and no residency waiver to chase. What out-of-state families should know instead is the King Out of State Grant: $2,000 per year, automatic for non-Tennessee residents, renewable with satisfactory progress. It is small next to the sticker price, so treat it as a modest offset rather than a reason to cross state lines.
The bigger residency issue runs the other way. King's Commitment Scholarship, the only guaranteed full-tuition award here, is restricted to Tennessee residents who are TN HOPE eligible. Out-of-state families are not eligible for it under any circumstance, and TN HOPE lottery money does not travel across state lines either. In-state and out-of-state families at King are working from genuinely different funding menus, and an out-of-state budget should be built on the academic scholarship alone.
King is private, so there is no in-state or out-of-state tuition split. A student from Bristol, Virginia pays the same published rate as a student from Bristol, Tennessee. The two columns above will always match. Where residency actually changes your bill at King is on the scholarship side, and that gap is significant. See the automatic scholarships section below.
The figures above are King’s direct costs, meaning what shows up on the bill. King also publishes an estimated full budget that adds books and supplies ($1,300), transportation ($1,590), personal expenses ($2,776), and average loan fees ($70). For a student living on campus, that brings the planning total to roughly $56,226. Living with family drops it to about $53,118. Living off campus in Bristol actually runs higher, around $59,778, because King budgets more for rent and travel.
Nursing families, read this line twice. The traditional BSN program carries an additional average fee of $1,196 per semester, which is roughly $2,400 a year on top of everything in the table. Nursing is King’s signature program, so this catches a lot of people. RN-BSN students pay $72 per semester instead, and graduate nursing fees range from $63 to $1,243 per semester depending on the track.
FAQ — Cost of Attendance at King University
Why is the in-state and out-of-state cost identical?
Because King is a private university. Private schools do not receive state operating subsidies tied to residency, so there is no discount to pass along to locals and no premium to charge outsiders. Everyone pays the same published rate. The savings for Tennessee residents show up later, in the scholarship and state aid layers.
Is the average net price of about $22,347 realistic?
It is the federal figure, meaning the average that families actually paid after grants and scholarships were subtracted. It is real, but it is an average across every income band. Families with lower incomes typically pay well under it. Families who do not qualify for need-based aid and land in the lower merit tiers can pay considerably more. This is exactly why the Net Price Calculator matters more at King than the average does.
Why do cost figures for King vary so wildly online?
Because third-party sites blend traditional undergraduate, online, adult studies, and graduate pricing, and King charges those populations very differently. You will see numbers quoted anywhere from $11,955 to $38,890 for the same school. The traditional day-program figure is the one in the table above, and it comes straight from King’s published 2026-2027 cost of attendance.
Does living on campus actually cost more?
Not necessarily, and this is one of King’s genuine quirks. Housing and food on campus run about $11,600, but King’s own off-campus budget estimate is higher once you add rent, utilities, and driving. On top of that, living on campus makes your student eligible for the $2,000 King Bell Scholarship, which disappears the moment they move off. Run the comparison with the Bell Scholarship included or you will get the wrong answer.
Will tuition go up each year?
Almost certainly. Small private universities typically raise tuition somewhere in the two to five percent range annually. Your scholarship amounts, however, usually stay fixed at the dollar figure in your original offer. That means the gap between cost and aid tends to widen a little each year. Budget for a few hundred dollars of drift per year and you will not be surprised as a junior.
Is there an application fee?
No. King charges nothing to apply and uses rolling admission, so there is no strategic reason to wait. Applying early puts your student in front of the scholarship formula sooner, which is the only thing that actually matters here.
https://www.king.edu/admissions/financial-aid/tuition-and-fees/traditional-undergrad-cost/
https://www.king.edu/admissions/financial-aid/cost-of-attendance-by-program/
📅 King Scholarship Timeline (Simple Version)
- Anytime, rolling: Apply for admission. Free, no fee, no deadline. Your academic scholarship is calculated from your GPA as soon as you are admitted.
- As early as possible after October 1: File the FAFSA. This unlocks the Commitment Scholarship, the Alumni and Friends Grant, and state aid.
- September 1: The hard FAFSA deadline for Tennessee HOPE eligibility for fall. King cannot waive this one, and no HOPE means no King Commitment Scholarship.
- Before classes start: The Snider Honors interview has to be completed. There is no joining later.
Parent rule of thumb: King has almost no deadlines of its own, which lulls families into moving slowly. The deadlines that will actually cost you money here are the state ones.
Automatic Scholarships and Grants at King University
We have placed the Commitment Scholarship in this section because mechanically it belongs here. There is no form, no essay, and no competition. Every accepted freshman is reviewed automatically. But it is worth being blunt about who this is for: it is not a merit award. It is gated on family income, not grades. Your student needs parent adjusted gross income of $70,000 or less, Pell eligibility on the FAFSA, Tennessee residency, and TN HOPE eligibility, and they must be a first-time freshman enrolling full time in a traditional program.
If your family clears all five of those bars, this is the most valuable thing on this entire page and it will cover your tuition for four years. If you miss any one of them, the Commitment is simply not available and your planning should start from the King Academic Scholarship instead.
💡 The Last-Dollar Trap (and How to Work Around It)
The King Commitment is what financial aid people call a last-dollar award. King adds up every scholarship and grant you receive from every source, then contributes whatever is left to reach full tuition. That sounds generous, and it is, but it has an unintuitive consequence: winning an outside scholarship may not put a single extra dollar in your pocket. If your Rotary Club hands your student $2,000, King may simply contribute $2,000 less.
There is one real workaround, and it depends on where your student lives. If they are in King housing with a King meal plan, outside scholarships can be applied to room and board first, which is money the Commitment does not cover anyway. That turns an outside award into genuine extra help. If your student lives off campus, King reduces the Commitment award to cover tuition only, and the workaround disappears. For a family chasing local scholarships, this is a real argument for the dorm.
Note: King does not publish a GPA-to-dollars chart for its Academic Scholarships. We will not invent one. Run King’s Net Price Calculator for your student’s actual number, then call financial aid at 800.362.0014 to confirm it.
Automatic Awards — FAQs (King University)
When do I need to apply to get automatic merit?
There is no scholarship deadline. King uses rolling admission and calculates your academic scholarship from your GPA when you are admitted. That said, file the FAFSA by September 1 if you are a Tennessee resident, because that is the state’s HOPE deadline and HOPE eligibility is a requirement for the Commitment Scholarship.
Do test scores affect my scholarship amount?
No. King is test-optional and its academic scholarships are calculated from high school GPA for freshmen and transfer GPA for transfer students. Test scores are not part of the formula. This is unusual and it works in favor of strong students who simply do not test well.
How much is the King Academic Scholarship?
King does not publish the amounts. Anyone quoting you a specific figure is guessing or reading a third-party site that made one up. The Net Price Calculator is the only honest answer, and it takes about five minutes.
Do these renew?
The Academic Scholarship and the Out of State Grant renew with satisfactory academic progress. The Commitment Scholarship is stricter: a 3.0 cumulative GPA checked every single semester, continuous full-time enrollment, and continued Pell eligibility. Lose it for grades and you can earn it back exactly once.
My student is out of state. What do we actually get automatically?
The King Academic Scholarship plus a flat $2,000 Out of State Grant, both renewable. That is the automatic layer for non-Tennessee families. The Commitment Scholarship is not available to you, and Tennessee HOPE money does not cross state lines. Build your budget on the academic award.
Can we stack all three?
In-state Pell-eligible families stack the Academic Scholarship with the Commitment, though remember the Commitment fills a gap rather than adding on top. Out-of-state families stack the Academic Scholarship with the Out of State Grant. Athletic scholarship recipients are the exception and lose access to the Out of State Grant entirely.
https://www.king.edu/admissions/financial-aid/scholarships-and-grants/
https://www.king.edu/admissions/financial-aid/tuition-and-fees/traditional-undergrad-cost/net-price-calculator/
🏆 Flagship Scholarships (Competitive Scholarships)
There is no essay contest here. No finalist weekend, no interview panel deciding who gets the big award, no nomination process. King has nothing resembling a Presidential Scholars competition. If your student is a strong writer with a stack of leadership positions who was counting on out-competing other applicants for money, King is not the place that rewards that.
If your student has solid grades and your family has real financial need, the opposite is true. King’s biggest awards go out on published formulas, and formulas do not have off days.
The closest thing King has to a flagship award is the King Commitment Scholarship, and we cover it in the automatic section because that is how it functions. It has published eligibility rules, it reviews every accepted freshman automatically, and nobody is competing against anybody. Two awards do involve an evaluation, but neither is a competition in the usual sense: the arts scholarships require an audition or portfolio, and the Snider Honors Scholarship requires an interview. Both are covered further down.
✅ Can You Stack Scholarships at King?
| Aid Type | Stacks? | King Parent Translation |
|---|---|---|
| King Academic Scholarship | Yes, with everything | This is your base layer. Almost every admitted student has one, and it survives every other decision you make, including taking athletic money. |
| King Commitment Scholarship | Yes, but it fills a gap | Last-dollar. It tops you up to full tuition after everything else lands, so extra awards shift the source of the money rather than the total. Living on campus lets outside scholarships go toward room and board instead. |
| Bell, Out of State, Lettie Pate, EPC, Anne Liston, Phi Theta Kappa | Yes, unless you took athletic aid | These are the gap-fillers, and they add up faster than families expect. A dorm-living Tennessee woman with EPC membership could layer several of these. |
| Athletic Scholarship | Blocks almost everything | Take it and you keep only the Academic and Honors awards. Everything else on this page goes away. Price both packages before signing. |
| Arts talent awards | Yes, with a caution | King states that arts talent awards affect Commitment Scholarship eligibility. If you qualify for the Commitment, ask financial aid to run both numbers before accepting. |
| State aid (HOPE, TSAA) | Yes, and it is required | TN HOPE eligibility is a prerequisite for the Commitment Scholarship, not a bonus. Missing the September 1 FAFSA deadline for fall costs you both. |
| Outside scholarships | Depends entirely | If you have the Commitment, they may reduce it. If you do not, they are straight additional help. This is the single biggest fork in King’s aid math. |
This institution does not offer designated Competitive scholarships at this time.
❓ Competitive Scholarship FAQs
Does King have a full-ride scholarship?
No. The King Commitment Scholarship guarantees full tuition, which is the largest award available, but it does not cover housing or food. Plan on roughly $11,600 a year for those even with the Commitment in hand.
Is there any award my student can compete for?
The arts scholarships are the closest thing. Where a student lands in the $2,000 to $5,000 Trayer Music range or the $1,000 to $2,500 Performing and Visual Arts range depends entirely on the audition or portfolio. That is one of the only places at King where preparation genuinely moves the dollar figure.
Does King participate in National Merit or QuestBridge?
No to both, and King is not a Stamps Scholarship partner either. If your student is a National Merit Finalist, the schools that pay heavily for that credential are elsewhere, and it is worth comparing.
Is a strong essay worth writing for King?
Not for scholarship purposes, because no King award is decided by essay. Save the effort for outside scholarships from civic groups and foundations, and read the last-dollar warning above before you do, because if your family has the Commitment Scholarship those outside dollars may not increase your total.
My student is a recruited athlete. What should we ask?
Ask the financial aid office for two written packages: one with the athletic award, one without. Compare the totals, not the athletic number alone. Athletic aid blocks the Bell Scholarship, the Out of State Grant, Lettie Pate Whitehead, Anne Liston, Phi Theta Kappa, and the Alumni and Friends Grant, and for some students the non-athletic stack is worth more.
https://www.king.edu/admissions/financial-aid/scholarships-and-grants/
The Jack E. Snider Honors Program at King University
A quick clarification, because the terminology matters when you are comparing schools. King runs an honors program, not an honors college. There is no separate honors dorm, no separate curriculum track, no honors dean. What there is instead is a small cohort of academically motivated students who get meaningfully more faculty attention than everyone else, which at a school of King’s size is worth more than it sounds.
The Snider Honors Program is named for a man who worked at King from 1955 until his retirement and spent more than fifty years teaching and mentoring students in Bristol. Members get early class registration, one-on-one faculty mentorship, support for individual research, funding for travel abroad, and encouragement toward scholarly publication and conference presentation. The scholarship attached to it is modest. The access is not.
- Award: $1,000 per year, renewable with satisfactory participation in the program
- Who can apply: New freshmen and new transfer students only
- Process: Call the Admissions Office at 800.362.0014 to begin. An interview is required.
- Hard rule: Acceptance into the program must happen before your student starts classes
Honors Scholarships
If your student is being recruited to play a sport, the Snider Honors Scholarship is one of only two King awards they can keep alongside athletic money. The other is the Academic Scholarship. Everything else disappears. For a recruited athlete with strong grades, getting into Honors is not just an academic decision, it is one of the only ways to add dollars to the package.
Honors Program — FAQs (King University)
Is Honors admission automatic for high-GPA students?
No. There is a separate application and an interview. King does not publish a GPA or test cutoff for the program, which means the interview carries real weight. Call admissions and ask what they are looking for before your student sits down.
Is $1,000 a year worth the trouble?
The money alone, probably not. The early registration, faculty mentorship, research support, and study abroad funding, almost certainly yes. At a school where merit is a formula and there is no competitive scholarship track, Honors is the main place where a strong student gets treated like one.
Can transfer students join?
Yes. The Snider Honors Scholarship is explicitly open to new transfer students as well as new freshmen. The same before-classes-start rule applies.
Can out-of-state students apply?
Yes, with no residency restriction at all. This is one of the few significant King awards where being from Virginia or Georgia does not put you at a disadvantage.
What happens if my student’s grades slip?
King ties renewal to satisfactory participation in the program rather than a published GPA threshold. That is more forgiving than the Commitment Scholarship’s semester-by-semester 3.0 check, but it also means staying engaged is not optional. Show up for the mentorship.
https://www.king.edu/academics/jack-e-snider-honors-program/
https://www.king.edu/admissions/financial-aid/scholarships-and-grants/
⭐ College Specialty
King is a small Presbyterian-affiliated university with about a thousand undergraduates, a 12 to 1 student-faculty ratio, and more than 80 majors, concentrations, pre-professional programs, and minors spread across five schools. That combination is unusual. Most schools with that many program options are three or four times King’s size, which means the class you take in your major may well have a dozen people in it.
School of Nursing — Nursing is King’s headline program and the one most likely to bring a family here from out of state. King runs a traditional BSN, an RN to BSN completion track, and a deep set of graduate options including family nurse practitioner, adult gerontology acute care, pediatric, psychiatric mental health, and nurse leadership. One budgeting caution that belongs right here rather than buried: the traditional BSN carries an additional average fee of roughly $1,196 per semester on top of tuition. Ask about it before you compare King’s sticker price to anyone else’s.
- Digital Media Art and Design: One of the fields King promotes most actively, and one of the few places where students can pick up scholarship money for portfolio work. Majors, minors, and even ensemble participants qualify for the arts talent award.
- Forensic Science: A genuinely uncommon undergraduate offering at a school this size, and one King calls out by name as a career-focused pathway.
- Social Work: King runs both undergraduate social work and a Master of Social Work, and it has funded them unusually well. There is a dedicated MSW endowed scholarship for students living within 50 miles of Bristol, plus Tennessee’s Behavioral Health Pathways program, which provides up to $30,000 in tuition aid over two years for TN residents pursuing an MSW or MSN in counseling or psychiatric mental health. That is a serious amount of money for a small program.
- Business, Economics and Technology: King highlights international business specifically, which pairs with a study abroad program that runs from Ireland to China and starts as early as a student’s first semester.
- Education: Teacher preparation in biology, chemistry, math, and Spanish qualifies for the federal TEACH Grant, worth $4,000 a year in exchange for a four-year teaching commitment. Read the conversion terms carefully, because an unfulfilled TEACH Grant turns into a loan with back interest.
- Health Administration and Psychology: Both available, both offered with online flexibility, though King does not promote them as signature programs the way it does nursing and digital media.
One thing worth naming plainly: King is not a research university and does not pretend to be. What it offers instead is scale that lets professors know your student’s name, a required first-year trip to Washington, D.C. with the entire freshman class, and travel opportunities that are unusually accessible for a school this size. Whether that is worth the price depends entirely on the student, which is the honest answer for every small private college.
🔗 Official King University Links
Every link below was checked directly against King’s website. Use these to confirm award terms, costs, and deadlines before you make a decision. King updates its scholarship page more often than the third-party sites do, and the third-party numbers for King are unusually unreliable.
-
Undergraduate Admissions:
https://www.king.edu/admissions/undergraduate/ -
Apply (free, rolling):
https://apply.king.edu/ -
Scholarships & Grants (the full award list, with downloadable PDFs):
https://www.king.edu/admissions/financial-aid/scholarships-and-grants/ -
Net Price Calculator (start here, it is the only way to see your merit number):
https://www.king.edu/admissions/financial-aid/tuition-and-fees/traditional-undergrad-cost/net-price-calculator/ -
Traditional Undergraduate Costs (2026-2027 tuition, fees, housing, food):
https://www.king.edu/admissions/financial-aid/tuition-and-fees/traditional-undergrad-cost/ -
Cost of Attendance by Program (full budgets including books, travel, and nursing fees):
https://www.king.edu/admissions/financial-aid/cost-of-attendance-by-program/ -
Jack E. Snider Honors Program:
https://www.king.edu/academics/jack-e-snider-honors-program/ -
Schools & Academic Programs:
https://www.king.edu/academics/schools-and-institutes/ -
Majors & Programs:
https://www.king.edu/programs -
Consumer Information / Right to Know (graduation rates, retention, outcomes):
https://www.king.edu/about/consumer-information/
A note on King’s own numbers: King’s cost page states it awards more than $18 million in financial aid annually, while its Net Price Calculator page states $35 million. We have not been able to reconcile the two and have cited neither figure above. King also publishes no Common Data Set, which is why the test score ranges you see quoted for King on other sites disagree with each other. Financial aid can be reached at 800.362.0014 or financialaid@king.edu.