Alabama State 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: $13,889 — 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

📌 One important note on the table above

As of our last check in September 2026, Alabama State’s official tuition and costs page still displays 2024–2025 figures. That is not an error on our end, it is what the university currently publishes, and the numbers above match ASU’s page exactly.

The good news for planning purposes: ASU’s tuition has been remarkably flat. Independent tuition trackers show essentially no increase in published rates over the last several years, which is unusual among public universities. So while most schools warrant a 2 to 5 percent annual cushion, these figures are a more reliable baseline than a four-year-old sticker price would normally be. We would still budget a modest increase, and we will update this page the moment ASU posts new rates.

Sources:
https://www.alasu.edu/financial-aid/tuition-costs.php
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?100724-Alabama-State-University=

📅 ASU Scholarship Timeline (Simple Version)

• October 1: Scholarship application opens. FAFSA opens the same day. Do both.
• October to mid-February: The entire institutional money window. Application, deposit, transcript, and test scores all need to land inside it.
• February 15: Scholarship application closes. This is your real deadline, not July 30.
• May 10 / July 30 / November 15: Admissions deadlines for summer, fall, and spring. These are months later than the money deadline and catch families off guard every year.

Parent rule of thumb: at Alabama State, treat February 15 as the date the whole thing hinges on. Getting admitted after that is easy. Getting paid after that is not.

Where the name comes from. In 1867, nine formerly enslaved men pooled $500 and founded the Lincoln Normal School in Marion, Alabama, so that Black children in the state would have somewhere to learn. That school eventually became Alabama State University, and those nine men are considered its founders. ASU named its entire automatic scholarship program after them. The tier names are not marketing: Freedom, Legacy, 1867, Lincoln Normal, Heritage, Dreamer’s, Promise, Marion Strong, Perseverance, Founders, and Marion to Montgomery. When your student sees “M-9” on an award letter, that is what it means.

These awards are based on your student’s academic record and residency, with no separate scholarship form beyond admission. But two conditions catch people: a FAFSA must be on file, and freshmen need qualifying ACT or SAT scores even though ASU is test-optional for admission. Awards renew for up to eight semesters for freshmen and six for transfers, as long as your student stays full-time, completes 24 hours a year, and holds the minimum GPA.

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One award, not a pile. Colleges apply your student's single best automatic award. Automatic scholarships almost never stack with each other, though some stack with housing, departmental, or outside money. The stacking notes on each card tell you which.

⚠️ Be honest with yourself about the cutoffs

ASU publishes the dollar amount for every Marion 9 tier in plain text. It publishes the GPA and test-score requirements for those tiers only inside two image files on its scholarship page, with no text equivalent. That means there is no chart you can screenshot, search, or check your student against, and it means the tier your student lands in is not something you can predict from home. The one exception is the Promise award, where ASU states a 2.75 GPA minimum in text. For everything else, call Admissions at (334) 229-4291 and ask them to walk you through it. Get the answer before February.

Sources:
https://www.alasu.edu/financial-aid/types-of-aid/marion-nine-automatic-scholarships.php
https://www.alasu.edu/admissions/index.php

The application is not automatic, but it is not an essay marathon either. ASU does not require essays, interviews, portfolios, or a finalist weekend for these. Your student applies for admission, and once accepted, a scholarship option appears inside their student account. That is the whole process. The tradeoff is that only eligible students see the option at all, so if it is not showing up, that is a phone call to Admissions rather than something to wait out.

Award	Covers	Parent Translation
Presidential Academic	Tuition, fees, books, room and board	A true full ride. Your out-of-pocket direct cost goes to roughly zero.
Academic Excellence	Tuition, fees, books	Housing and meals are still yours. Budget about $6,050 a year.
Academic Incentive	Tuition plus a $500 book award	Fees and housing are yours. Still the highest-value award most families can realistically reach.
Black & Gold	$4,000 per year	A flat amount applied toward tuition, fees, or housing. Helpful, not transformative.

🧠 Parent Strategy: The Transfer GPA Gap Nobody Mentions

If your student is transferring in, read the bands carefully. ASU lists the Incentive award for transfers at a 3.00 to 3.25 GPA, but for freshmen it lists 3.00 to 3.50. Meanwhile Excellence starts at 3.51 for everyone.

Do the math and a transfer student sitting at a 3.35 falls into a gap: above the published Incentive band, below the Excellence floor. A freshman with the identical GPA is squarely inside Incentive. We have no idea whether that gap is intentional or a drafting artifact on ASU’s page, and the university does not address it. If your transfer student lands between 3.26 and 3.50, do not assume they are out. Call Financial Aid and make them tell you which award applies.

❓ Competitive Scholarship FAQs

When is the deadline?
The scholarship application opens October 1 and closes February 15. That window is the whole ballgame at Alabama State.

Does meeting the GPA and test minimum guarantee the award?
No, and ASU says so directly. These are competitive and funded from a limited pool. The university states that submitting an application does not guarantee an award and that awards depend on available funds. Treat the published minimums as the door, not the finish line, and aim comfortably above them.

What GPA and test scores does my student need?
For freshmen: Presidential needs a 3.76 GPA and a 26 ACT or 1240 SAT. Excellence needs a 3.51 to 3.75 GPA and a 22 ACT or 1160 SAT. Incentive needs a 3.00 to 3.50 GPA and a 20 ACT or 1020 SAT. Black & Gold needs a 2.75 GPA and an 18 ACT or 940 SAT.

Can transfer students apply for these?
Yes. All four are open to transfers from accredited colleges with at least 24 completed semester hours, and they run for six semesters rather than eight. Transfers are evaluated on college GPA, and as with most transfer scholarships, no test score is involved.

Careful with the transfer credit-hour thresholds, they are not the same number.
ASU admits transfer students with as few as 15 transferable hours and a 2.0 GPA. But the Marion 9 transfer scholarships require 24 transferable hours. A student can be admitted as a transfer and still be nine credits short of any transfer merit money. If your student is close to that line, it is worth finishing one more course before applying.

Can my student stack a competitive award with a Marion 9 award?
Do not plan on it. ASU publishes no stacking rules for institutional aid, and the normal practice is to award the stronger package rather than both. Get it in writing from Financial Aid before it goes in your budget.

What does it take to keep the award?
Full-time enrollment at a minimum of 12 hours per semester, at least 24 completed hours by the end of spring, and a cumulative 3.0 GPA for Presidential, Excellence, and Incentive or 2.75 for Black & Gold. ASU reviews this every spring.

Is Alabama State a National Merit or Stamps partner?
No to both. ASU does not participate in either program, so if your student is a National Merit Finalist, the value of that recognition here comes through the standard competitive awards rather than a dedicated package.

Is there a catch on the award letter?
One worth knowing. ASU states that academic scholarship awards are not final until the student has completed every acceptance requirement, including a signed acceptance letter on file. An award notification is not the same as a locked-in award. Finish the paperwork.

Sources:
https://www.alasu.edu/financial-aid/types-of-aid/competitive-merit-scholarships.php
https://www.alasu.edu/admissions/index.php

🧠 Parent Strategy: ASU’s Donor Trust Catalog Is a Goldmine, and There Is No Shortcut

Alabama State publishes roughly one hundred individually named donor scholarships on a single page. Not categories. Named funds, each with its own eligibility rules and its own separate online application form. Most ask for nothing more than a 3.0 GPA.

Here is the part that matters. Unlike schools that run one universal scholarship portal where you apply once and get matched, ASU makes you find and submit each fund separately. That is more work, and it is exactly why these go underclaimed. Fewer families finish the list.

1. Open ASU’s Donor Trust Scholarships page and read the whole thing. It takes about twenty minutes.
2. Search it for your county and your high school. There are funds tied to Greene County, Crenshaw County, Wilcox County, Washington County, Lowndes County, and specific schools including Opelika High, Robert C. Hatch High, and several in Tuscaloosa and Montgomery.
3. Search it for your city if you are out of state. There are funds for graduates of Detroit public schools and for students from the San Francisco Bay Area.
4. Search it for your major. Business, education, mathematics, English, history, political science, biology, pre-med, music education, and theatre all have dedicated funds.
5. Submit each form separately and save a confirmation for every single one.

Parent translation: an hour with that page is probably the highest-value hour you will spend on ASU financial aid. A student with a 3.0 from the right county studying the right major can match four or five separate funds that most applicants never open.

If your student plays or performs, start here.

The Mighty Marching Hornets are one of the most visible things about Alabama State, and the performing arts pipeline at ASU is deeper than its enrollment would suggest. Marching band, ensemble, and music department awards all run through audition with the Department of Visual and Performing Arts, and there is a separate theatre talent scholarship in the donor catalog that asks for an audition or a technical portfolio. These stack with academic aid in most cases and they are evaluated on talent and departmental need rather than GPA alone. Contact the department early, well before the audition calendar fills.

❓ Hidden Gems FAQ

Can these stack with Marion 9 or a competitive award?
Usually yes, and that is what makes them worth the effort. Donor, departmental, ensemble, and leadership awards are generally additive rather than replacements. The limits are total institutional aid and your cost of attendance. Always read the award letter, because that is where any offset language shows up.

What is the deadline for the Donor Trust scholarships?
There is no single one. ASU does not publish a universal deadline or award amount for these funds, and each fund is administered on its own timeline. Practically, that means submitting in the fall alongside everything else rather than waiting for a date that may never be announced. Call Financial Aid at (334) 229-4862 for the current cycle.

My student is already enrolled at ASU. Are they too late?
Not at all, and this is a genuine advantage of the donor catalog. A large share of those funds are written for sophomores, juniors, rising seniors, or graduating seniors, and several require completing a year at ASU before applying. If your student did not get merit money as a freshman, the donor list is the place to go next year.

How do the ROTC scholarships work here?
ASU hosts Air Force ROTC Detachment 019, which also serves students at AUM, Huntingdon, Faulkner, and Troy Montgomery. Army ROTC runs through the AUM battalion pathway. Both can cover tuition and add a monthly stipend and book allowance, and both carry a service commitment after commissioning. One caution: ROTC tuition benefits can reduce or replace other tuition-based institutional aid, so confirm the combined package with both Financial Aid and the detachment before assuming the awards add together.

Is undergraduate research money realistic for my student?
It is, but it is relationship-driven rather than application-driven. These stipends flow through faculty grants and departmental projects, so the students who get them are the ones who introduced themselves to a professor early and asked what research is running. Encourage that conversation freshman year, not junior year.

How will we find out if we won something?
ASU notifies scholarship recipients by letter, and awards also surface in the student account. Because donor funds are administered separately, notification timing varies fund by fund. Keep your confirmations so you can follow up on anything that goes quiet.

Sources:
https://www.alasu.edu/financial-aid/types-of-aid/donor-trust-scholarship.php
https://www.alasu.edu/financial-aid/asu-scholarships.php
https://www.alasu.edu/websites/AirforceROTC.php

Let’s be straight about the money here.

Alabama State does not publish scholarships attached to the Du Bois Honors Program. There is no honors stipend, no honors housing award, no named honors fellowship on ASU’s site. We looked, and we would rather tell you that than pad this section with awards that do not exist.

That is a real difference from schools where honors admission unlocks a separate pot of money. At some universities, getting into the honors college is the scholarship strategy. At Alabama State it is not. Honors here is an academic experience, and your financial aid comes from the tracks described elsewhere on this page.

So here is how to think about it. Your student’s scholarship plan runs through the competitive awards in October and the Marion 9 tiers at admission. Honors is a separate decision about the kind of coursework they want. Both are worth pursuing. Just do not let a family assume that one produces the other, because at ASU it does not.

Sources:
https://www.alasu.edu/universitycollege/web-dubois-honors-program
https://www.alasu.edu/financial-aid/asu-scholarships.php

The one most people know:
The Mighty Marching Hornets and the performing arts. ASU’s band is nationally recognized and is genuinely one of the university’s calling cards. But the broader College of Visual and Performing Arts is the substance underneath it: music education, theatre, and visual arts all run audition-based and portfolio-based scholarships, and several named donor funds are written specifically for students in those programs. If your student performs, ASU is a school where that talent converts directly into money and into a place in the community.

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