Troy 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: $13,147 — 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

Troy publishes its official cost of attendance on a 12 credit hour per semester basis. That is full-time for financial aid purposes, but it is not enough to graduate in four years. Most bachelor’s degrees need about 120 hours, and 12 hours a semester gets you 96 in four years.

If your student takes 15 hours a semester, which is what four-year graduation actually requires, add roughly $2,900 a year in-state or $5,200 a year out-of-state to the tuition and fee lines above. Troy charges by the credit hour, so every extra hour costs money.

Parent translation: the number Troy publishes and the number that gets your kid a diploma in four years are two different numbers. Budget for the second one, but understand that a fifth year of the first one usually costs more.

💡 New for 2026-2027: Troy unbundled its tuition

Troy’s Board of Trustees approved a restructure that took effect in Fall 2026. Tuition and fees used to be quoted as one bundled number. Now they are listed separately: $382 per credit hour for in-state tuition, a $50 per credit hour general fee, and a program fee that runs from $24 to $75 per credit hour depending on which college your student’s courses live in.

That last one matters. Nursing courses carry a $75 per hour program fee. Business is $50. Engineering and biomedical sciences are $38. Arts, humanities, and education are $24. Two students taking the same number of hours at Troy can have meaningfully different bills based on their major alone. Honors, interdisciplinary studies, orientation, leadership, and dual enrollment courses carry no program fee at all.

🛑 First, the thing nobody tells you: Troy has no automatic freshman merit

At a lot of southern publics, a certain ACT score and GPA guarantee a certain scholarship the moment you are admitted. Alabama works that way. Mississippi State works that way. Troy does not.

Every freshman scholarship at Troy is competitive and requires a separate application in the Troy Scholarship Portal between September 1 and December 1. Meeting the GPA and test benchmarks gets your student considered. It does not get them awarded. Troy describes its merit awards as limited in number.

Those freshman awards live in the Flagship section below. This section covers the one place Troy really is automatic, which is transfer students.

📅 The Troy Calendar (Simple Version)

• September 1: Freshman merit application opens in the Troy Scholarship Portal.
• December 1: Freshman merit application closes. This is the single most important date on this page.
• January 1: Foundation scholarships open. Completely separate pool, completely separate window.
• March 1: Foundation scholarships close. Housing application deadline also lands here.
• March 1: Troy’s financial aid priority date. File the FAFSA by mid-February to make it comfortably.
• July 31: Annual re-validation deadline for military spouse and dependent scholarships.
• August 1: Final admissions application deadline. Note this is eight months after the money closes.

Parent rule of thumb: at Troy, the admissions deadline is a red herring. Treat December 1 as your real deadline, even if your student is still shopping schools in the fall.

❓ Flagship / Competitive Scholarship FAQs

When is the deadline for Troy’s freshman scholarships?
December 1. The application opens September 1 in the Troy Scholarship Portal. This is a hard stop and it sits eight months ahead of Troy’s August 1 admissions deadline, which is why families who focus on the admissions calendar routinely lose thousands of dollars.

If my student hits the ACT and GPA numbers, is the scholarship guaranteed?
No, and this trips people up. Troy describes these as competitive awards with limited availability at varying amounts. Meeting the benchmarks makes your student eligible to be considered. Applying in September rather than late November is genuinely worth money here.

Can my student receive more than one Troy merit scholarship?
No. Troy’s own award listings state that students can only receive one merit-based scholarship. The exception is the Trojan Opportunity Expanded Scholarship, which is structured as a tuition-gap award rather than a merit award and is meant to be held alongside one.

Does Troy superscore?
For scholarships, yes. Troy takes the best score from each section across all of your student’s test dates and averages them. Writing scores do not count and ACT and SAT scores cannot be mixed. For admission, Troy’s help desk states it uses the single composite and does not superscore. So a retake can raise the award without changing the admission decision.

Which ACT range applies to the Chancellor’s Scholarship?
Troy’s scholarships page says 25 to 29. Troy’s honors page says 26 to 29 for the same award. Both agree the RSAT range is 1230 to 1350. If your student is right at a 25, apply and let Troy make the call.

What is the RSAT?
It is Troy’s shorthand for the current redesigned SAT, the 1600-point version administered since March 2016. If your student took the SAT in the last several years, that is the RSAT.

Does Troy have a National Merit or Stamps package?
No on both. Troy is not a National Merit sponsor and is not a Stamps partner. The Scholars PLUS award is Troy’s top-of-the-ladder package.

What should my student prepare?
Official test scores and a high school transcript are the core of it. Troy does not publish an essay or interview requirement for the four main merit awards, which makes this an unusually low-effort application for the money involved. Our Brag Sheet Builder is still worth using to organize achievements for the Foundation scholarship round in January.

🧠 Parent Strategy: Troy’s Two-Season Problem

Almost every family that loses money at Troy loses it the same way. They apply for merit scholarships in the fall, get an award, and stop. Then the Foundation scholarships open on January 1 and close on March 1, and nobody in the household knows it happened.

1. Log into the Troy Scholarship Portal with your Trojan Pass credentials.
2. Complete the general application, and answer every optional question. Major, hometown, county, activities, affiliations. Those fields are what match your student to donor funds nobody else applies for.
3. Apply to as many individual Foundation scholarships as you match. You can only be awarded one, but applying to twelve costs nothing more than applying to two.
4. Handle the awards with no portal button separately. Cardinal and Black and the Lion’s Club Scholarship are email-only. Write to scholarships@troy.edu.
5. Screenshot every confirmation after you submit.

Parent translation: the fall round is the big money. The winter round is the money most people leave sitting on the table.

• Lion’s Club Scholarship. There is no apply button anywhere on Troy’s site. You email the Scholarship Office. Most families never apply because there is nothing to click.
• Pathways to Progress. Up to $3,000 a semester in state grant money, and it lives on an admissions page rather than in the scholarship portal. Ten south Alabama counties, associate degree required, first-come first-served with no deadline.
• Audition scholarships. Music, band, choir, theatre, and dance. Amounts are unpublished, non-majors are frequently eligible, and getting considered mostly requires making a phone call.

👨‍👩‍👧 Have a sophomore or junior? One decision now turns into money later.

Troy’s Cardinal and Black Award goes to students who completed at least 12 hours of dual enrollment through Troy’s Early College program. That means it is effectively decided two or three years before application season. If your student is taking dual enrollment credit anyway and Troy is on the list of schools you are considering, running those courses through Troy rather than somewhere else quietly converts into $1,000 to $2,000 a year, renewable for three years.

❓ Hidden Gems FAQ

Can these stack with a Troy merit award?
Usually, but Troy is inconsistent about saying so. The small one-time leadership awards, Legacy, Boys and Girls State, HOBY, and Lion’s Club, generally sit on top of a main merit scholarship. Troy does not publish the rule for several of them. Ask the Scholarship Office in writing rather than assuming, and remember total aid can never exceed your cost of attendance.

Why do some awards have an apply link and others just an email address?
Troy administers these through different offices. Cardinal and Black and the Lion’s Club Scholarship both say to email scholarships@troy.edu instead of using the portal. Music and theatre auditions route through the directors. That fragmentation is annoying, but it is also why the pools stay small.

What is the deadline if none is listed?
Work backward from the two main windows. Anything freshman merit-adjacent should be in by December 1. Foundation scholarships run January 1 to March 1. Pathways to Progress has no deadline at all and is first-come first-served, so apply the moment you qualify. Audition dates are set by each program, so contact the director early in the fall.

Do I have to be an alum for the Legacy Scholarship?
Your student’s parent or grandparent has to be a member of Troy’s National Alumni Association or a local chapter, which is not the same as having a diploma. If Grandma graduated from Troy but never joined, a membership signup before December 1 is what turns this into $1,000. That is the whole trick.

My student did HOBY, but not at Troy. Do they qualify?
Troy’s wording specifies the HOBY conference held at Troy. If your student attended somewhere else, ask before you count on it. That location clause is why this award has one of the smallest applicant pools on the list.

We are a veteran family. Which military award is better?
They are not interchangeable, and you have to choose. The Veterans and Families Scholarship gives a 10 percent tuition discount and waives the application fee, verified by DD214. The Military and Family Scholarship is for actively serving members and scales with credit hours, but it cannot be combined with any other Troy scholarship or tuition assistance, blocks most VA benefits, and covers only one degree per level. Call the TROY for Troops Center and have them price both against your actual credit load before you enroll under either.

Can current Troy students apply for these?
Many of them, yes. Foundation scholarships are explicitly open to new and current students, and the Veterans, Military, and audition awards are open to all undergraduates. The January to March window applies every year your student is enrolled, not just the first one.

• Scholars PLUS recipients (33–36 ACT / 1450–1600 RSAT, 3.7 GPA) are invited automatically.
• Scholars Award recipients (30–32 ACT / 1360–1440 RSAT, 3.7 GPA) are invited automatically.
• Chancellor’s Scholarship recipients (roughly 26–29 ACT / 1230–1350 RSAT, 3.5 GPA) are invited automatically.
• Faculty-nominated first-year students with a 3.5 or better. Invitations go out by Troy email in mid-March, decisions land in mid-April, and these students start the honors curriculum in year two.
• Transfer students holding the Transfer Presidential or a top ONETROY award with a 3.5 or better, invited during the transfer admissions cycle, also starting in year two.

Honors admission at Troy does not come with its own tuition scholarship. The money is the merit award that got your student invited in the first place. What honors adds on top is the Chancellor’s Award for Global Competitiveness, worth up to $5,000 toward study abroad, plus honors coursework, a peer mentoring program, and a cohort international trip. Every scholar is also expected to complete at least one independent study abroad experience, so that $5,000 is not a perk, it is funding for a requirement.

• Since Troy’s 2026 fee restructure, most courses carry a program fee of $24 to $75 per credit hour depending on the college.
• Honors (HON) courses are explicitly exempt. So are interdisciplinary studies, orientation, leadership, and co-op courses.
• For a student taking several honors sections a year, that exemption is worth real money on top of everything else.

The Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery is a Troy University facility, sitting on the site of the arrest that started the Montgomery bus boycott. It is a working museum and archive, not a display case, and it anchors a set of humanities and public history opportunities that students at much larger universities would have to compete hard to access. Troy’s College of Arts and Humanities is currently running Mellon Foundation-funded fellowships built around Alabama’s cultural archives, with both faculty and undergraduate research positions.

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