Emory 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: $27,986 — 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

💚 Read This Before You Look at That Total Again

Beginning in fall 2026, Emory Advantage Plus covers full tuition for domestic undergraduates whose families have total assessed parent income up to $200,000 with typical assets. That is the tuition line in the table above, gone. Housing, food and fees remain, and need-based aid works on those separately.

• Covers Emory College, Oxford College, Goizueta BBA majors and the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing.
• Open to incoming, returning and transfer students. Not just freshmen.
• Up to eight semesters, fall and spring only. Summer is not covered.
• No separate application. FAFSA, CSS Profile and IDOC tax documents.
• Reviewed every year, so you refile annually.

The catch worth understanding: eligibility runs on parental total income, not adjusted gross income. Total income counts salary, tips, interest, dividends, rental income, capital gains, royalties, severance and untaxed income, and it ignores the deductions on your return. Plenty of families whose AGI looks comfortably under $200,000 will find their total income does not. Emory also reviews whether assets are typical for that income level.

Every published net price figure for Emory, including the one above, is built from federal data that predates Advantage Plus. It describes what families paid before free tuition existed. Expect the real number to drop meaningfully for middle-income families in the next reporting cycle. Emory says about 3,100 undergraduates currently receive Emory Advantage, and that roughly 80% of those students will have scholarships equal to or greater than tuition once Advantage Plus is running. Use Emory’s own calculators rather than any published average, and use them for your household.

📅 Emory Scholarship Timeline (Simple Version)

• November 1: Early Decision I deadline. If you apply ED I, this is also your scholarship deadline.
• November 15: The scholarship deadline that matters for everyone else. Complete file in, scholar box checked, under any plan.
• January 1: Early Decision II and Regular Decision admission deadline. No scholarship value. If this is the first date you acted on, the merit competition already closed.
• February 15: Financial aid priority date (FAFSA, CSS Profile, IDOC). March 1 is the hard deadline.
• By March 1: Scholar finalists notified.
• Early April: Scholar awards finalized, after the ED deposit deadlines have passed.

Parent rule of thumb: at Emory, treat November 15 as the real deadline and January 1 as a formality you have already beaten.

Only two awards on this page come close to being automatic in the sense of requiring no extra work from you. Both are below.

What “no automatic merit” actually costs you, in numbers

Emory’s own Common Data Set for 2025-2026 tells the story better than any brochure. Out of 1,443 first-year students:

• 93 students received institutional merit aid with no financial need behind it. That is about 6% of the class.
• Those 93 averaged $24,314 a year.
• Meanwhile 474 students had their full demonstrated need met, averaging a $68,253 aid package.

Read those two rows against each other. At Emory the need-based machine is roughly five times larger than the merit machine and pays nearly three times as much per student, and that was before Advantage Plus. For most families reading this page, the honest strategy is to file the FAFSA and CSS Profile carefully and treat merit as a lottery ticket you buy for free by checking a box on November 15.

Emory’s Regular Decision admission deadline is January 1. Scholar consideration closes November 15. A family that plans to apply Regular Decision over winter break has quietly forfeited every award on this page without ever missing an admission deadline. Nobody sends you a warning. The box just is not checked and the file just is not in.

If you apply Early Decision I, your date is November 1. And if the size of the award will determine whether you can enroll, Emory itself recommends applying Regular Decision, because scholar awards are not finalized until early April, after both ED deposit deadlines.

❓ Flagship / Competitive Scholarship FAQs

Do I need a nomination or extra essays?
No. Emory says no additional nomination forms, essays or materials are required, and applicants do not need a counselor nomination. The entire merit case is built inside your regular admission application, which means your personal statement and Emory’s supplemental short answers are doing double duty.

Can international students be considered?
Yes for the Scholar Programs. Emory states that all students, regardless of citizenship, can be considered for the scholar programs. Note that Emory Advantage Plus is a separate thing and is limited to domestic students, and need-based aid for international students is available to only a select number each year.

What do the full-ride Woodruff awards actually cover?
Full tuition, required fees, on-campus housing and meals, renewable for eight semesters. Beyond the money, scholars get priority course registration, a dedicated lounge, an off-site retreat, specialized advising, and access to summer funding for international experiences and unpaid internships. At a research university, that access is arguably worth as much as the tuition.

Are there Woodruff awards beyond the standard one?
Three focused tracks carry the same package: the Woodruff-MLK Scholarship for students from the Metro Atlanta area, the Woodruff Debate Scholarship tied to the Barkley Forum policy debate team, and the Woodruff Music Scholarship. You are considered for all of them from the same application, though debate and music each require you to engage the program directly.

My student is a musician but does not want to major in music. Is there anything here?
Yes, and it is one of the best-kept secrets on this page. The Music Liberal Arts Scholarship is a half-tuition award currently valued at about $130,000 over four years, and recipients are not required to major in music. Around 90% of Emory music students are double majors in pre-health, pre-law, business and the sciences. The catch is the calendar: Regular Decision applicants need the Common Application and scholar opt-in by November 15, then pre-screening and a completed audition by December 15. That audition date sneaks up on people.

What is the Goizueta Scholars award worth?
It ranges from half of tuition up to full tuition and fees for four years, including study-abroad options. The financial piece gets the attention, but the structural piece may matter more: Goizueta Scholars receive guaranteed admission to the BBA program. Everyone else applies internally in their second or third year and competes for a seat.

What is the George W. Jenkins Scholarship?
A full-ride award funded by Publix Super Markets Charities covering tuition, fees, on-campus room and board, a laptop, an annual stipend, health insurance if needed, and up to $2,500 for a service trip. It is limited to students graduating from high school in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee or Virginia, and it weighs demonstrated financial need and a documented history of overcoming hardship as heavily as academics. Note that Emory’s Scholars Program page describes Jenkins Scholars selected prior to 2025 as Emory Scholars, so families should confirm current program structure with the admission office.

When will I know?
Finalists are notified by March 1. Awards are finalized in early April. Reply date is May 1.

🧠 Parent Strategy: At Emory, the Second Chance Is Real

Most colleges hand out merit money once, at admission, and that is the end of it. Emory is unusual. The Office for Undergraduate Education runs a whole set of competitions that open after your student is already enrolled and has a track record on campus. A student who got nothing at admission can win $10,000 a year as a rising sophomore, or $25,000 for senior year as a junior.

1. First year, fall semester: aim for a cumulative GPA of 3.75 or better. That is the invitation threshold for the Dean’s Achievement Scholarship.
2. First year: get involved in something real. Every one of these competitions weighs co-curricular contribution, not just grades.
3. Build a relationship with at least one faculty member. Nearly all of these require a recommendation from Emory faculty or staff.
4. February of each year: check the College Connect Application Center. That is where all of these live, under “Emory Scholars Program.”

Parent translation: at Emory, admission is not your last shot at merit money. It is the first of four.

• Does anyone in your household work for Emory or Emory Healthcare? Dependent children of eligible employees can receive a full-tuition scholarship.
• Is a parent a United Methodist minister or missionary? That is a 45% tuition benefit, roughly $31,600 a year at current rates.
• Is your daughter from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee or Virginia? The Lettie Pate Whitehead Scholarship requires no application at all.
• Do you live in Newton County, Georgia? Oxford College partners with the Newton County King Scholar Fund on an award your neighbors are the only competition for.

❓ Hidden Gems FAQ

Where do current students actually apply for these?
The College Connect Application Center. Log in, select “Start New Application,” choose “Emory Scholars Program” from the first dropdown, then pick the specific scholarship from the second. Every one of the Emory College competitions runs through that one portal, which is convenient once you know it exists and invisible until then.

My student did not get merit at admission. Is the Dean’s Achievement Scholarship realistic?
More realistic than most people assume. Emory awards roughly 8 to 10 per year at $5,000 a semester, up to $10,000 a year for as many as six semesters. The invitation threshold is a 3.75 cumulative GPA at the end of fall semester, though Emory notes an invitation is not required in order to apply. Read that twice: a student at 3.7 can still submit. The application asks for a transcript, a resume, one essay and one recommendation from Emory faculty or staff.

Which students are excluded from the Emory College competitions?
This catches people. The Dean’s Achievement, Sonny Carter and Sam Bredow scholarships are open only to students enrolled solely in Emory College, with no program of study in the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, Goizueta Business School or Oxford College. A student who declares a BBA path gives up eligibility for these three. That is a real trade-off worth weighing.

If my student wins merit at Oxford and then goes into the business school, do they lose the money?
No. The BBA Dean’s Scholarship exists precisely to solve this. It renews the merit award a student already holds when they matriculate into Goizueta, and recipients receive a total of eight semesters of funding regardless of which pot the money started in. No application required.

How many Sonny Carter Scholarships are there?
More than the old listings suggest. For the most recent competition Emory anticipated making up to four awards of $25,000 each. Students apply as juniors, need a minimum 3.0 GPA, and the funding covers senior year. The selection criteria follow Sonny Carter’s own life closely: intellectual, physical and moral development for the common good. Sustained physical activity genuinely counts here, which is unusual.

When do these competitions run?
Nearly all of them open in February and close in late March or mid-May, with decisions in April or June. If your student is checking in September, they are checking at the wrong time of year. Set a calendar reminder for early February of each year.

What about departmental scholarships?
They exist, they are often donor-funded, and they vary enormously by department. There is no central list. The move is to ask the department directly once your student declares a major, and to be the kind of student the faculty in that department actually know by name. These awards frequently go to nominees rather than applicants.

If you arrived here searching for the Emory Honors College, there isn’t one. There is no separate honors admission track, no honors application to submit alongside your regular one, no honors dorm, and no honors scholarship pool. We are telling you this plainly because a lot of sites imply otherwise, and families waste real time hunting for an application that does not exist.

• Do not go looking for an honors application. Put that energy into the November 15 scholar opt-in instead.
• If small classes are the draw, look seriously at Oxford College rather than waiting for an honors track in Atlanta.
• If undergraduate research is the draw, start building faculty relationships in year one. The Honors Program application comes in junior year and rests on those relationships.
• Emory’s class sizes already skew small. Per the most recent Common Data Set, 280 undergraduate sections enrolled between 2 and 9 students, and 625 enrolled 10 to 19. The student-faculty ratio is 8.3 to 1.

Emory has no engineering program. Not a small one, not a hidden one. Zero engineering degrees are conferred. Students who want engineering pursue a dual-degree arrangement with Georgia Tech, which means five years, two campuses and a transition partway through. ROTC runs the same way: Army, Navy and Air Force ROTC are all hosted at Georgia Tech, not at Emory.

The Rollins School of Public Health is graduate-only. Emory’s public health reputation is enormous and entirely deserved, and it belongs to a graduate school your undergraduate cannot enroll in. The undergraduate path is the Human Health major or Quantitative Sciences, often followed by a 4+1 route into a master’s. If a family chose Emory believing their student would major in public health at Rollins, that is a misunderstanding worth clearing up before the deposit.

Was this helpful? Share it with another parent who’s comparing college costs!