Chicago 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: $10,133 — 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

Illinois law requires public universities to hold a student’s tuition rate flat, and Chicago State locks yours for six years from the term you first enroll, or until you hit 120 credit hours, whichever comes first. Change your major and the lock follows you. Even better, CSU extends the same guarantee to out-of-state freshmen and transfers, and transfer students get their rate guaranteed based on 120 credits minus whatever they brought in.

Parent translation: the tuition number you see on your student’s first bill is the number you will see on their last one. At most schools you should budget 3 to 5 percent annual increases. Here you do not have to. Housing and meal costs can still move, and the mandatory fee is set separately, so those are the lines to watch.

Chicago State’s published rate schedule has exactly two undergraduate columns: U.S. resident and international. There is no third column for out-of-state Americans. A student from Indiana, Wisconsin, or Mississippi pays the same per-credit rate as a student from the South Side. The university’s own 2026-2027 Cost of Attendance worksheet reflects this, listing only “Resident” and “International” undergraduate budgets.

International undergraduates are a different story. They pay $721 per credit hour in tuition plus the same $121 mandatory fee, which works out to roughly $22,374 in tuition and fees for the year against $13,806 for everyone else.

One honest note: CSU’s admissions marketing page still says tuition “is dependent on … whether you are in-state or out of state.” The Bursar’s published rate tables and the official Cost of Attendance worksheet say otherwise for domestic students. We are going with the Bursar. If an admissions rep tells you differently, ask them to show you the rate table.

📅 The Chicago State Timeline (Simple Version)

• Fall of senior year: Apply. Admission is rolling, so there is no priority deadline to miss, but earlier is better for housing and for RISE enrollment.
• As soon as the FAFSA opens: File it. The FAFSA is the trigger for RISE, for AIM High, and for keeping the Honors scholarship. Illinois residents who cannot file a FAFSA should file the Alternative Application for Illinois Financial Aid instead.
• June 1: Honors College application deadline. This is the only hard deadline that costs real money.
• June 30: Housing Scholarship priority deadline.
• Summer before freshman year: The five-week RISE Academy program runs. Completing it is what makes the RISE scholarship stick.

Parent rule of thumb: at most schools the deadline is the enemy. At Chicago State the enemy is the unfiled form. Nothing here is competitive enough to lose on merit, and almost everything is lose-able on paperwork.

⚠️ Read the RISE Fine Print Before You Celebrate

CSU’s RISE page leads with the words FREE TUITION AND FEES in large type. Elsewhere on the same site, RISE is described as a “gap-closing” award that covers tuition and fees after your financial aid and grants are applied. Both statements are true. Here is what that means at the kitchen table:

• If you have no other aid, RISE pays the whole tuition and fee bill. That is the headline case.
• If you have a Pell Grant, a MAP grant, and AIM High already covering tuition, RISE fills whatever gap is left. That may be a small number, and you do not get the difference in cash.
• Either way, your tuition and fees land at or near zero for year one. The award is real. It just does not stack the way a private-college merit scholarship would.
• RISE covers tuition and fees only. Housing and food, which run about $12,992, are still on you. That is where the Housing Scholarship and the UPS partnership become worth chasing.

One more thing families miss: RISE is contractual. Your student signs an agreement to attend the required workshops and finish the five-week summer program. Skip the program, lose the scholarship.

📉 What Changed With AIM High

AIM High is a state-funded Illinois grant, not a CSU award, and the state cut it. Through the 2025-2026 award year, AIM High Merit paid up to $6,000 per year, a maximum of $24,000 over four years. For 2026-2027 the maximum is $1,000 per year. The same reduction hit the transfer and SuccessU versions.

The one piece of good news buried in the change: CSU also dropped the ACT and SAT requirement. Through 2025-2026 you needed an 18 ACT or 960 SAT to qualify. For 2026-2027 eligibility rests on a 2.50 GPA, Illinois residency, an Illinois high school, and household income at or below eight times the federal poverty level, which is a genuinely generous ceiling.

Because funding depends on a fresh state appropriation each year, this number can move again in either direction. Confirm the current figure on CSU’s AIM High page before you build a budget around it.

As of this writing, the “Apply here” link for the Housing Scholarship on CSU’s financial aid page does not work. The underlying address is a string of internal program codes rather than a real form. Do not read that as the scholarship being closed. Call the Office of Student Financial Aid at (773) 995-2304 or email csu-finaid@csu.edu and ask them to send you the form directly. Remember to apply from your CSU email address, which is a stated requirement.

❓ Competitive Scholarship FAQs

Is there one application for CSU scholarships or many?
Mostly one. CSU runs a centralized scholarship application, and submitting it puts you in consideration for most university and college-level awards automatically. Your file is then routed to the college that houses your major, so a nursing student is read by Health Sciences and a business student by the College of Business. The Housing Scholarship requires its own separate form on top of that.

When is the deadline?
The centralized application does not publish a single hard date the way a flagship competition would; individual awards carry their own timelines. The two dates worth writing down are June 1 for the Honors College and June 30 for the Housing Scholarship priority deadline.

Does the Housing Scholarship cover meals?
No, and this catches people. It covers the cost of your room in the CSU Residence Hall. The meal plan is a separate charge you still owe. Since food and housing together run about $12,992, having the room covered is roughly half of that line.

Will winning an institutional scholarship reduce my other aid?
It might. Competitive institutional awards can reduce or replace other institutional aid rather than adding on top, because your total package cannot exceed the cost of attendance. Before you decline anything or make a plan around a new award, ask Financial Aid to show you the before-and-after package.

Is Chicago State a Stamps, QuestBridge, or National Merit partner?
No to all three. CSU does not participate in those programs. If your student is a National Merit Finalist chasing a headline package, this is not the campus for that strategy.

My student writes well and interviews well. Is that worth anything here?
In one place: the Honors College. It is the only award at Chicago State that asks for a personal statement and letters of recommendation, and it is also the most valuable award on campus. If your student has the 3.5, that application is the highest-leverage hour they will spend on this school.

🧠 Parent Strategy: Solve for Housing, Not Tuition

At most universities you spend your energy chasing tuition dollars. At Chicago State, tuition is often already handled by RISE or Honors. The line that stays stubbornly unpaid is the roughly $12,992 for housing and food, plus another $3,400 in books and $3,800 in transportation.

So flip the usual order of operations. After you have locked in RISE or Honors, go after the awards below in this sequence:

1. The Housing Scholarship (Section 4), because it covers room outright.
2. The UPS partnership, because it pays tuition and fees, hands you a textbook allowance, a $300 monthly stipend, free transit, and an actual paycheck.
3. Book vouchers through AIM High if your student is in Honors or holds a Grow Your Own award.
4. Departmental and identity-based awards, which are small but stack cleanly and add up.

Parent translation: a family that gets RISE and skips everything below can still owe thirteen thousand dollars. A family that gets RISE plus the Housing Scholarship plus a UPS shift can genuinely graduate without loans.

📚 Program-Specific Money Worth Asking About

These are listed on CSU’s pages but do not have their own scholarship cards. Ask about them by name if your student fits:

• Early Childhood Access Consortium for Equity (ECACE): full funding for people already working with children from birth to age five who want a professional educator license. Evening, virtual, and hybrid classes, two-year completion, with ESL and special education specializations built in.
• Nursing: HRSA Nursing Scholarship, the Illinois Department of Public Health Nursing Education Scholarship, and Coursey Enterprises awards for first-year nursing students.
• ISAC teaching waivers: Minority Teachers of Illinois and the Special Education Teacher Tuition Waiver, both administered by the state.
• IACAC Transfer Scholarship: CSU is a member institution, which gives incoming transfer students access.
• Illinois Legislative Black Caucus Foundation Scholarship: linked directly from CSU’s scholarship page.
• Scheinbuks Scholars: an endowed award for biological sciences majors, run through the Latino Resource Center listings.
• Jose Carrillo Scholarship: funded and awarded each spring by OLAS, the student organization housed in the Latino Resource Center.

❓ Hidden Gems FAQ

Is the UPS program really that good?
For the right student, it is the best financial deal on this page. Tuition and fees paid, a textbook allowance, $21 an hour for part-time work, a $300 monthly stipend, and free public transportation to the job. It is DACA friendly. The catch is the schedule, which often means overnight or early-morning sort shifts stacked against a full course load. Families who wave it off because of the hours are frequently the same families who end up borrowing.

Can undocumented and DACA students get aid at Chicago State?
Yes. CSU has maintained resources for undocumented students since Illinois House Bill 0060 passed in 2003, and the university states plainly that it welcomes students regardless of citizenship or residency status. Illinois residents who cannot file a FAFSA should file the Alternative Application for Illinois Financial Aid, which is what opens the door to AIM High and state aid. The scholarship database for undocumented students lives with the Latino Resource Center, not with Financial Aid, which is why people miss it.

How much are the Latino Resource Center awards worth?
Individual awards run roughly $300 to $2,000 depending on how the fund is doing that year. The fund has awarded more than $165,000 since 2003. Applications typically open in January with a June deadline, and awards are made for the fall semester.

The CIMST page looks thin. Is it worth checking?
Be realistic about it. The computing and math department’s page leans more toward paid research internships and external programs than toward cash scholarships. Treat it as a paid-opportunity board rather than a scholarship list, and check it each term because the listings rotate.

Do outside scholarships hurt my aid package?
They are applied after federal, state, and institutional aid, and they can reduce institutional grants if your total would otherwise exceed the cost of attendance. At CSU there is usually room, because the cost of attendance is high relative to what most students are actually awarded. All outside awards must be reported to the CSU Scholarship Coordinator.

Can continuing students apply, or is this all for incoming freshmen?
Most of this section is open to continuing students, which is unusual and useful. Departmental awards, the Latino Resource Center fund, the Tuition and Fee Waiver Program, the UPS partnership, and the Community Services Book Grant are all available to students already enrolled. This matters at Chicago State specifically, because RISE ends after the sophomore-year award and something has to replace it.

Chicago State states this plainly: to receive Honors College scholarships, students must complete a FAFSA every year they are enrolled. Not once. Every year. Students who are unable to complete a FAFSA, including international students, are not eligible for Honors College scholarships at this time. Students may also be asked to complete additional scholarship forms before each semester or academic year.

Put the FAFSA opening date in your own calendar, not just your student’s. This is the single most common way families lose a four-year award.

Tuition and mandatory fees only. Housing, meals, books, transportation, and personal expenses are not included, which leaves roughly $23,700 of the published cost of attendance still on the table. The Honors College is refreshingly direct about this and actively points its own students toward RISE Academy, AIM High, and outside scholarships to fill the gap. Take that advice literally. An Honors student who stacks the Housing Scholarship on top is in a fundamentally different financial position than one who does not.

Here is a path most families never find. Students who complete an AA or AS degree at City Colleges of Chicago and enroll at CSU through the Guaranteed Admission pathway receive Honors College eligibility as an explicit program benefit, alongside a waived application fee, early academic advising, and the $1,000 Chicago Star award. The requirement is a 2.5 GPA and junior standing, with a participation form submitted one term before enrollment.

A student who did not have the 3.5 in high school can build a 3.35 at a community college and walk into a scholarship that covers tuition and fees through graduation. That is a legitimate two-year strategy worth considering.

You will find sources online calling Chicago State a historically Black college or university. It is not. CSU is a Predominantly Black Institution (PBI), which is a different federal designation. It was founded in 1867 as a teacher training school open to the county, not as an institution established for Black students during segregation. It is a member of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and a Space Grant institution, and roughly three quarters of its students are Black.

This matters practically, not just historically. Some scholarships and programs are restricted to HBCUs specifically. If your student is applying to an award with that requirement, Chicago State will not qualify, and it is better to learn that now than in April.

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