Indiana Scholarships & Grants (2027–2028): 21st Century Scholars, Frank O’Bannon & Next Generation Hoosier Educators Deadlines

Senior in the 2026–2027 School Year? The Aid Year You Need Is 2027–2028

Your move: open the FAFSA and look at the year printed at the top. If it says 2027–2028 and your student is a senior, you are in the right place.

How Indiana State Aid Actually Works

Indiana has two front doors, and a family that walks through only one gets a fraction of what is available.

Door one is the FAFSA. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid is the form that produces your Student Aid Index, or SAI, a single number that estimates what your family can contribute. Indiana uses the SAI directly: the lower the number, the larger the state grant. Indiana’s deadline is April 15, earlier than most states and earlier than most colleges.

Door two is ScholarTrack. This is the state’s own portal, separate from the FAFSA and separate from any college. ScholarTrack is where 21st Century Scholars status lives, where the Scholar Success Program activities are logged, where the Next Generation Hoosier Educators application is submitted, where Fast Track is claimed, and where appeals are filed. A family that files the FAFSA and never opens ScholarTrack can still lose a scholarship worth four years of tuition, because the pledge and the activities live there and nowhere else.

Three Indiana myths that cost real money

Myth one: it is too late for the 21st Century Scholarship. This is the most expensive sentence in Indiana right now. It was true for every cohort before the Class of 2027 and it is not reliably true for the Class of 2027, 2028, 2029, or 2030. The state now enrolls income-eligible students automatically. You do not find that out by asking around. You find it out by logging into ScholarTrack.

Myth two: full time means full award. Full-time enrollment in Indiana is twelve credit hours a semester. The full Frank O’Bannon Grant requires thirty credit hours across the award year, which is fifteen a semester. A student who enrolls at exactly twelve, does well, and finishes the year with twenty-four credits has met every definition of a successful full-time student and has still dropped to the reduced award. This gets its own section.

Myth three: we make too much for state aid. Indiana pays the Frank O’Bannon Grant on a sliding scale that runs well past the point most families assume it stops, and it pays roughly twice as much at a private college as at a public one, by statute. Roughly 37,000 Hoosier students receive it each year, with an average award near $5,000. Filing costs an evening. Not filing also ends the Next Generation Hoosier Educators Scholarship, EARN Indiana, and a high school diploma.

What Indiana Actually Pays, Program by Program

The 21st Century Scholarship

This is the big one, and it is not a merit scholarship. There is no test score requirement and never has been. Eligibility was set in middle school on household income, and for recent cohorts the state set it for you.

What it pays depends entirely on where the student enrolls, and the difference is large enough to change a college list:

It covers tuition and regularly assessed fees. It does not cover room, board, or books. A family reading “full tuition” as “free college” is going to be surprised by a housing bill.

To convert an enrollment into an actual scholarship, the student has to do all of the following. Every one of these is a place students fall out:

• Create a ScholarTrack account and sign the Scholar Pledge. Auto-enrolled students show as Approved Pending Student Pledge until they do.
• Complete and log the twelve Scholar Success Program activities, three per year across grades nine through twelve. Doing the activity without logging it does not count.
• Graduate with at least a 2.5 cumulative GPA and a Core 40 diploma. The Class of 2027 may instead opt in to the new Indiana Diploma, which becomes standard for the Class of 2029.
• File the FAFSA by April 15 of senior year, and every year after.
• Apply to and be admitted to an eligible Indiana institution during senior year.
• Enroll full time within one year of high school graduation.

The Frank O’Bannon Grant

Indiana’s main need-based grant, made up of the Higher Education Award for public and proprietary schools and the Freedom of Choice Grant for private ones. It is awarded purely on the FAFSA, with no separate application, and it is paid toward tuition and regularly assessed fees. There is a statutory quirk worth knowing: by law the public award is set at exactly half the private award at every level.

Award size is driven by the Student Aid Index, and by one other thing: whether the student earned enough credits to hold the on-time award or dropped to the reduced full-time award. Here is what the approved 2026–2027 schedule pays at the top and where it runs out:

The top figures are for a Student Aid Index of negative 1,500, the lowest the FAFSA reports. Awards step down in twelve bands from there. The full grid is published by the Commission in the 2026–2027 schedule of awards.

Frank O’Bannon eligibility also carries requirements families rarely see written down. You must be an Indiana resident by December 31 of the year before the aid year, which for 2027–2028 means December 31, 2026, and remain a resident all year. You must be enrolled full time in a program leading to an associate or first bachelor’s degree, or a certificate at Ivy Tech or Vincennes. And you must meet your college’s satisfactory academic progress standard, which is set by the college and is not something the Commission can appeal for you.

The 30-Credit Rule (Indiana’s Most Expensive Fine Print)

Full-time enrollment in Indiana is twelve credits a semester. The full state grant requires fifteen. Those are two different numbers and nobody tells families that until the second year.

Here is exactly how it works. A student’s first award year always pays the on-time amount, so freshman year looks fine no matter what. Renewal is where the rule bites. To renew at the on-time award, the student must complete at least 30 credit hours during the twelve-month award year. Complete 24 to 29 and the award drops to the reduced full-time amount. Complete fewer than 24 and renewal is gone.

A student who enrolls in twelve credits each semester, passes everything, and stays in good standing finishes the year at twenty-four. That is the trap. Nothing went wrong. The student did what full time means, and sophomore year the check is smaller.

What it costs, at 2026–2027 rates, is remarkably consistent across the income scale. The gap between the on-time and full-time award is essentially flat:

Those gaps hold at nearly every Student Aid Index band, which is what makes this rule so unusual. It is not a penalty that scales with need. It is a flat toll on anyone who takes twelve credits instead of fifteen. And at the upper end of the eligibility range it is worse than flat: at a public college with an SAI between 3,001 and 4,000, the on-time award is $1,700 and the full-time award is zero. Six credits is the whole grant.

The same 30-credit standard applies to the 21st Century Scholarship. Scholars must earn at least 30 credits each academic year to keep the award, and the scholarship is valid for eight semesters of full-time enrollment and must be used within eight years of activation.

Your move: when your student registers for fall classes, count the credits, not the courses. Five three-credit courses is fifteen. Four is twelve. If fifteen is genuinely too much in a given semester, the fix is to make it up in a summer or winter term inside the same award year, and to know that the award year runs twelve months, not two semesters.

Major Indiana Programs

Every card below links to the Commission’s own page. Amounts shown are the current published rates.

Fast Track and the Dual Credit Lever (Indiana’s Best-Kept Secret)

The 30-credit rule has an upside almost nobody uses, and a shortcut most families are already halfway through without knowing it.

Dual credit and AP hours count toward the state’s credit requirement

Indiana statute allows Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and dual credit hours to be used toward the credit completion requirement. Hours earned beyond thirty in an award year can also be banked and counted toward future years.

Read that again as a parent of a junior. Every dual credit course your student takes in high school is not only cheaper tuition later. It is a cushion against the exact rule that quietly shrinks the state grant in year two. A student who arrives with a block of dual credit hours has room to take twelve credits in a hard semester without dropping off the on-time award.

Indiana also runs the Indiana College Core, a transferable 30-credit block of general education available at many high schools through dual credit. A student who completes it has effectively banked a full year of the credit requirement before setting foot on campus.

Fast Track: the reward side of the same number

Fast Track lets a 21st Century Scholar or Frank O’Bannon recipient pull additional state aid into the current award year, in exchange for using up eligibility units faster. To qualify the student must have used 100% of their award in the current year and have earned at least 30 credit hours in that award year, without help from the credit bank. Full-time Fast Track requires at least 50 eligibility units remaining, half-time requires at least 25.

In practice this is how a motivated student pays for a summer term with state money instead of a loan, and how a student on a three-year graduation plan funds the extra courses that make it possible. It is claimed through ScholarTrack on its own application window, and it is almost entirely invisible to families because it never appears in an award letter.

Your move: if your student is on track to clear thirty credits in the current award year, open ScholarTrack in the spring and look for the Fast Track application before assuming summer classes have to be paid out of pocket. You are allowed to ask the financial aid office directly whether Fast Track applies to your student. It is a state program, not a favor, and they administer it.

Indiana State Aid Deadlines

The dates that repeat every year

The milestone chain for the Class of 2027

How Indiana Aid Stacks With Everything Else

Indiana’s stacking rules are more generous than most families expect, with one important limit. The 21st Century Scholarship and the Frank O’Bannon Grant both pay toward tuition and regularly assessed fees, and the combined state award cannot exceed the tuition and fees actually charged. Once tuition is covered, additional state aid has nothing left to pay for, so a Scholar at a public university generally will not also collect a large O’Bannon grant on top. The Commission may move any remaining Frank O’Bannon balance into the 21st Century Scholars fund or the Adult Student Grant fund at year end.

What this means in practice is that the state covers tuition and the college covers everything else, or nobody does. Housing, food, books, and transportation are where a family’s real gap lives, and they are exactly what state aid does not touch. That is why the college choice matters as much as the state programs.

Both examples below are illustrative. They use realistic but rounded figures to show the shape of the math, not a quote for your family.

Common Ways Indiana Aid Gets Lost

None of these are the student’s fault in any meaningful sense. Every one of them is a process problem, and every one of them is preventable if somebody names it early.

Who Benefits Most (Reality Check)

Low-income families

Indiana is genuinely strong here, and the Class of 2027 is the best-positioned cohort in the program’s history because of automatic enrollment. A 21st Century Scholar at an Indiana public university has tuition covered outright, which frees a Pell Grant to work on housing. The thing that most often breaks it is not income and not grades. It is the twelve unlogged activities.

Middle-income families

This is the group that assumes it gets nothing and is most often wrong. The Frank O’Bannon Grant still pays at a Student Aid Index of 4,000 at a public college and 7,000 at a private one. At a private Indiana college, the Freedom of Choice Grant is twice the public award by statute, which materially narrows the gap between a public and a private option for a middle-income family. Run the FAFSA before ruling anything out.

High-achieving students

Indiana’s state programs are need-based, so a strong transcript does not by itself produce a state check. The merit money in Indiana lives at the colleges, not at the statehouse, with two exceptions worth chasing: the Next Generation Hoosier Educators Scholarship for future teachers, and the Mitch Daniels Early Graduation Scholarship for students who finish high school a year early.

Students who test poorly

Indiana is one of the better states in the country for this student. The 21st Century Scholarship has no test score requirement of any kind, and the Frank O’Bannon Grant does not look at test scores either. On the college side, several Indiana institutions run GPA-only automatic grids. That is where the leverage is.

Adult and returning students

The Adult Student Grant is a renewable $2,000 for students who are financially independent on the FAFSA, show need, and enroll in at least six credit hours, which is a lower bar than the full-time requirement attached to most other Indiana aid. Returning students are also the group the Workforce Ready Grant is now being reserved for, so a parent going back for a credential is in a stronger position than a graduating senior seeking the same grant.

First-generation families

The recurring theme on this page is that Indiana’s money is real and its processes are quiet. Two logins, one deadline, and one credit count decide almost everything. If nobody in your house has done this before, our First-Gen Parent Guide and the grade-level checklists walk through the same ground in order.

Colleges That Stack Best With Indiana Aid

The state pays the same way everywhere. The 21st Century Scholarship covers tuition at any Indiana public, and the Frank O’Bannon schedule is set by institution type, not by institution. So the variable that actually moves your family’s bill is which college adds the most on top, at the numbers your student actually has. Below are the thirteen Indiana institutions currently verified in the CRP database. Award figures live on each college’s own page so there is one place to keep them current. Automatic means no essay, no interview, no committee.

The lowest academic bar for real money

• Purdue University Fort Wayne (Fort Wayne): the lowest automatic floor in our Indiana data. A three-tier grid starting at a 2.50 GPA with no test score required at any level, and separate tiers for residents, nonresidents, and transfers. Rolling admission, with December 1 recommended for best consideration, an enrollment deposit due June 1, and a final transcript deadline in mid-August for fall entry. Nonresident tiers pay more than resident tiers at each step.
• University of Southern Indiana (Evansville): the David L. Rice Merit Scholarship runs a clean four-tier GPA-only ladder from 3.90 down to 3.00, superscored, with no test score at any tier and a friendly renewal GPA. Rolling, with December 1 priority. USI also runs some of the strongest out-of-state and transfer terms in Indiana, including an out-of-state transfer grant at a 2.75 and a top scholar award that waives the nonresident charge at a 3.25.
• Vincennes University (Vincennes): open admission, and it still runs a real automatic ladder from a 3.00 GPA. This is also the one Indiana institution in our data with a genuine automatic full-ride path: the Valedictorian and Salutatorian award. There is an in-state award at a 2.50 GPA and a residential housing scholarship, which matters because housing is exactly what state aid does not cover. Priority January 15, then rolling.
• Indiana State University (Terre Haute): a straightforward GPA ladder starting at a 3.25 with no test score until the top tier, on a May 1 deadline for fall admission that is unusually late and a genuine second chance for a family that started slowly. Indiana State is also the only school in our Indiana data that pays 21st Century Scholars specifically, with separate housing and textbook scholarships at a 3.00 GPA. Given that the state scholarship does not cover housing or books, those two awards are aimed exactly at the gap.

The biggest automatic dollars

• Valparaiso University (Valparaiso): a three-tier automatic ladder where the entry tier opens at a 3.00 GPA and pays at a level most families associate with competitive scholarships, with no test score required at any tier. There is a National Merit Finalist add-on on top. Rolling, but apply by early February for maximum award consideration. On our data this is the single best automatic outcome in Indiana for a 3.0 student.
• Butler University (Indianapolis): a three-tier Academic Scholarship Program awarded from the admission application with no published GPA or test cutoffs, which means the tier you land in is genuinely unpredictable in advance. November 1 is the operative date: Early Action and Early Decision get full consideration and Regular Decision is considered only as funds allow, which is a harder cutoff than it sounds. A separate National Merit Finalist award requires a first-choice designation by early December.
• Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (Terre Haute): a single automatic merit band rather than a tiered grid, superscored, awarded from the admission application. November 1 Early Action priority, February 1 final. For an engineering-bound Indiana student this is often the largest automatic award on the list, and it is worth pricing against a public even at a private sticker.
• University of Evansville (Evansville): the most transparent grid in Indiana, six named tiers with published GPA and test cutoffs at each, opening at a 3.25 GPA with a 21 ACT. Evansville does not superscore, which is worth knowing if your student’s best composite came from combining test dates. February 1 lets updated scores and GPAs move a student up a tier, which is unusual and worth using.

The clean automatic grids

• Ball State University (Muncie): two automatic awards with published cutoffs, the first opening at a 3.50 GPA with a 21 ACT or 1060 SAT and the second at a 3.75 with a 24 or 1160. Superscores the ACT. December 1 priority.
• Indiana University Indianapolis: an admissions-based automatic award opening at a 3.50 GPA, with a parallel transfer version at the same GPA, on a June 1 deadline for domestic students that is the latest in our Indiana data. IU Indianapolis also administers the Indy Achieves Promise Scholarship for local students, which requires the FAFSA by April 15 each year to stay eligible.

A different model entirely

• Indiana University Bloomington: the state’s flagship, and it does not publish an automatic stat grid. Its Excellence scholarships are awarded from the admission application with no published amounts and no published criteria, on a firm November 1 date. We are not going to invent a number for them. The honors and competitive awards at IU are real and substantial, but they are applied for, not triggered. If IU is on the list, treat November 1 as the deadline that decides the money.
• Purdue University (West Lafayette): awards are made from the admission application on a firm November 1 deadline, with separate resident and nonresident versions of the Presidential and Trustees awards. The published nonresident awards are the larger ones, which reflects the higher nonresident tuition but is still worth seeing plainly. Purdue also hosts the Lilly Scholars at Purdue program, a full-tuition path tied to the county-based Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship, and college-sponsored National Merit and National Recognition awards.
• University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame): no automatic merit at all, by design. Notre Dame meets demonstrated financial need, which means the aid conversation is entirely a need conversation and the FAFSA and CSS Profile do all the work. Its named scholarships are competitive and few. For an Indiana family this is a genuinely different calculation than every other school on this page, and a low-income admitted student can end up paying less here than at a public.

Not yet in our database. Indiana has a large independent college sector and a very large public two-year system that we have not verified yet, so we are not going to publish numbers for them. The most important omission by far is Ivy Tech Community College, which enrolls more Hoosiers than any other institution in the state and is where the Workforce Ready Grant and a large share of two-year 21st Century Scholars money actually land. Also not yet added: Purdue University Northwest, the regional Indiana University campuses at East, Kokomo, Northwest, South Bend, and Southeast, DePauw, Wabash, Earlham, Hanover, Franklin, Taylor, Anderson, Manchester, Goshen, Huntington, Saint Mary’s College, Holy Cross College, Marian University, University of Indianapolis, Trine, Indiana Wesleyan, Grace College, Bethel University, Oakland City, Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Martin University (HBCU, Indianapolis), Calumet College of St. Joseph, and Indiana Tech. The 21st Century Scholarship and the Frank O’Bannon Grant are portable to eligible Indiana institutions including private ones, so check each college’s own scholarship page directly. We would rather leave them without numbers than publish a guess.

The two-year and transfer pathway

Starting at a two-year Indiana institution is a real strategy here, with two cautions attached. The 21st Century Scholarship pays full tuition at Ivy Tech or Vincennes, and the Frank O’Bannon Grant runs on the Ivy Tech schedule at those schools, so tuition is frequently covered outright for a commuting student.

Caution one is the clock. The 21st Century Scholarship is good for eight semesters of full-time enrollment and must be used within eight years of activation. Semesters spent at a two-year school come out of the same eight. A student who takes three years to finish an associate degree arrives at a four-year campus with less runway than they think.

Caution two is the credit count. Part-time enrollment is the natural rhythm of a working student at a community college, and it is incompatible with Indiana state aid, which requires full-time enrollment and thirty credits a year for the full award. The Adult Student Grant is the exception, at six credit hours.

The Indiana College Core is the mechanism that makes transfer work cleanly: a 30-credit block of general education that transfers as a unit among Indiana institutions. Ask about it before registering for the first semester, not after.

Smaller Indiana Programs Worth Checking

Indiana State Aid FAQs

Does my senior file the 2026-2027 or the 2027-2028 FAFSA?

The 2027-2028 FAFSA. Aid years are named for the year the money is spent, not the year you fill out the form. A student who is a senior during the 2026-2027 school year starts college in fall 2027, which is the 2027-2028 aid year. Indiana’s deadline for that form is April 15, 2027. If your student is a senior and the form in front of you says 2026-2027, you are on the prior year’s application.

Can you still join 21st Century Scholars in high school?

Not by applying, but you may already be enrolled. Applications close June 30 of eighth grade year, and the only exception is for students active in the foster care system. However, under a 2023 Indiana law the state now enrolls income-eligible students automatically, and the Class of 2027 was the first cohort enrolled that way. More than 40,000 students ended up in the 2027 cohort compared with roughly 19,000 who applied. Check ScholarTrack before assuming you missed it.

How much is the Frank O’Bannon Grant?

For 2026-2027 the maximum on-time award is $10,600 at a private Indiana college, $5,300 at a public one, and $4,050 at a proprietary school or Ivy Tech. Awards step down across twelve Student Aid Index bands from there. By statute the public award is exactly half the private award at every level. The 2027-2028 amounts are set by the Commission for Higher Education in November 2026 and reviewed by the State Budget Committee in December 2026.

Does Indiana state aid cover housing?

No. Both the 21st Century Scholarship and the Frank O’Bannon Grant pay toward tuition and regularly assessed fees only. Room, board, books, and transportation are not covered by either one. This is the most common misunderstanding of the phrase full tuition, and for a student living on campus the uncovered cost is usually larger than the tuition bill itself. Pell Grants and college scholarships are what typically cover housing.

Can you lose the 21st Century Scholarship?

Yes, and most losses happen before college starts. In high school a student can lose it by not signing the Scholar Pledge, by not logging the twelve Scholar Success Program activities in ScholarTrack, by graduating below a 2.5 cumulative GPA, by missing the April 15 FAFSA deadline, or by not enrolling in college within one year of graduation. In college it requires full-time enrollment and at least 30 credit hours each year, and it is limited to eight semesters within eight years of activation.

What happens if you miss the April 15 Indiana FAFSA deadline?

You can file an appeal through ScholarTrack, but the Commission for Higher Education approves them only for a published list of extenuating circumstances: a death in the immediate family, serious illness, documented medical reasons, pregnancy or the birth of a child, active duty military service, or participation in a religious or public service volunteer program. The Commission states that appeals based on forgetting or not knowing about a requirement will not be approved. Note that April 15 also applies to corrections, so a FAFSA filed on time but rejected for a missing signature can still fail.

Why did my Indiana grant get smaller in my second year?

Almost certainly the credit completion rule. Your first award year always pays the on-time amount, but to renew at that level you must complete at least 30 credit hours during the twelve-month award year. Complete 24 to 29 and you drop to the reduced full-time award, which at 2026-2027 rates costs $2,900 a year at a private college, $1,450 at a public one, and $1,150 at Ivy Tech. Complete fewer than 24 and renewal is lost. Full-time enrollment is twelve credits a semester, so a student taking exactly twelve lands at twenty-four for the year.

Do AP or dual credit hours count toward Indiana’s 30-credit requirement?

Yes. Indiana statute allows Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and dual credit hours to be used toward the credit completion requirement, and hours earned above 30 in an award year can be banked toward future years. This is one of the most useful and least known facts in Indiana financial aid, because it turns high school dual credit into insurance against a smaller state grant later. The Indiana College Core, a transferable 30-credit block of general education, is the fullest version of this strategy.

Sources and Verification

Every state figure and rule on this page was verified on August 19, 2026 against the Indiana Commission for Higher Education and its published documents. No amount on this page comes from a scholarship aggregator or a college’s summary of a state program.

• CHE State Financial Aid by Program, the full program inventory
• Approved 2026-2027 Frank O’Bannon Grant schedule of awards
• Commission presentation on the 2026-2027 schedule, including the statutory eligibility list and the funding timeline
• CHE Types of Financial Aid Appeals
• 21st Century Scholars and Learn More Indiana
• CHE Fast Track
• ScholarTrack, the state portal
• How we build and verify the CRP college database

College-level figures come from the CRP database, which is built from each institution’s own published scholarship and financial aid pages. Individual award amounts live on each college’s page rather than here, so there is one place to keep them current rather than two.

Rules change, and dollar amounts change more often than rules. Indiana sets the Frank O’Bannon schedule annually and the Commission opened its award methodology to public feedback in January 2026, so the 2027-2028 schedule may differ in structure as well as size. Confirm anything you are about to build a budget on with the Commission’s Financial Aid Support Center at (888) 528-4719 or awards@che.in.gov. Found something wrong? Tell us at leo@collegereadyparent.org and we will fix it and say so.