Elizabeth City State University · North Carolina

Elizabeth City State scholarships and merit aid

ECSU offers merit aid for strong academics and leadership, with multiple scholarship pathways available.

Verified Jul 20262 months ago

The short answer

Is Elizabeth City State worth a closer look?

Elizabeth City State may be worth checking, but its awards do not follow a simple grades-and-scores chart. Start with the published scholarships below.

Merit tiers2See who qualifies

Research checkedJul 2026By our research team

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Checking merit aid at Elizabeth City State

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Published scholarships

These amounts and requirements come from the school’s own published pages. Open an award to see who qualifies and how to keep it.

$7,000

Strada Leadership Scholarship

Apply separatelyCan continue

GPA: 3.25

Source

Full tuition

Chancellors Academic Scholarship

Apply separatelyCan continue

GPA: 3.5

See who qualifies and how to keep it

How to keep it

Maintain 3.5 GPA

Source

See what could change an award

Rules that could change the answer

These are the rules we would flag for your family. Each comes from Elizabeth City State's published information.

Renewal ruleChancellors Academic Scholarship: renewal floor that quietly knocks awards out
Maintain 3.5 GPA A single rough term can end a four-year award here without warning if the GPA floor isn't met cumulatively.

See costs and school data

Who this school may work for

Students with solid academic records or demonstrated leadership experience should explore ECSU's scholarship options.

Published yearly cost: Approximately $23,452 for 2026-2027. Source

Cost and graduation facts

Federal reporting on who actually enrolls at Elizabeth City State, what they paid after aid, and what happened next — independent of anything the school markets.

Average annual net price by family income at Elizabeth City State, academic year 2021-22 — in-state, Title-IV aid recipients only
Family income	Average net price paid
$0–$30,000	$4,246
$30,001–$48,000	$4,538
$48,001–$75,000	$5,354
$75,001–$110,000	$10,205
$110,001+	$15,663
All income levels (average)	$6,364

Sticker price vs. what students actually pay

Published tuition & fees (in-state), AY 2022-23: $6,536
Published tuition & fees (out-of-state), AY 2022-23: $10,536
Average net price paid (all Title-IV aid), AY 2021-22: $6,364

That works out to roughly a 64% discount below the federal AY 2021-22 average cost of attendance of $17,701 (College Scorecard — a separate, federally reported figure, not the published cost of attendance shown above).

Elizabeth City State is a public school; Scorecard's net price figure covers in-state, Title-IV-aid-recipient payers only — there is no comparable federal figure for out-of-state students.

Outcomes for students who enrolled here

Graduation rate (150% of normal time), 2016 cohort: 44%
First-year retention rate, 2021 cohort: 77%
Median debt at completion, 2020–2021 completers: $21,463 (~$228/mo on a 10-yr plan)
Median earnings, 10 years after entry (measured 2020-21): $40,026
Share of students receiving a Pell grant, AY 2021-22: 67%
Share of students receiving a federal loan, AY 2021-22: 64%

How to read these numbers

Net price reflects only first-time, full-time, degree-seeking students who received federal Title IV financial aid — not Elizabeth City State's full student body.
Published tuition is the catalog sticker price for all students, not a Title IV-only figure.
Graduation rate reflects the entire first-time, full-time, degree-seeking cohort — not only students who received Title IV aid.
Retention rate reflects all first-time, full-time, bachelor's-seeking students — not only Title IV aid recipients.
Median debt reflects only completers who took out federal student loans — not Elizabeth City State's full graduating class, and not limited to first-time, full-time students.
Median earnings reflect Title IV aid recipients who entered college and were working (not enrolled) roughly a decade later — not necessarily the graduating cohort, and not a recent graduate's paycheck.
Pell grant and federal loan participation covers first-time, full-time, degree-seeking students only.
Net price blends need-based aid and merit aid together — it is not a merit-specific estimate. It shows what similar-income families actually paid on average after every kind of aid, not what a strong-stats student could win in merit dollars alone. Treat it as cost context, not a merit forecast — a MeritPlaybook models merit aid specifically for your student’s own stats, which this net-price figure cannot do.

None of this is current-year data — the U.S. Department of Education reports it on a delay, and different figures below come from different reporting years. Net price is an academic year 2021-22 figure. Published tuition reflects the 2022-23 academic year. Graduation rate reflects the Fall 2016 entering, full-time, first-time, degree/certificate-seeking cohort; completion measured within 150% of normal time (~6 years for a bachelor's degree). IPEDS Graduation Rates component (C150_4). Retention reflects the Fall 2021 full-time, first-time, bachelor's-seeking cohort retained into the following fall. IPEDS Fall Enrollment component (RET_FT4). Median debt reflects the NSLDS FY2020 and FY2021 pooled completer cohorts (GRAD_DEBT_MDN, GRAD_DEBT_MDN10YR_SUPP). Median earnings reflect the Treasury-matched cohort entering college in AY2009-10 or AY2010-11, earnings measured 10 years later in calendar years 2020 and 2021, inflation-adjusted to 2022 dollars (MD_EARN_WNE_P10).

Source: U.S. Department of Education, College Scorecard.

See other scholarships and cost examples

Other Elizabeth City State scholarships worth checking

These awards can be harder to find. Each one has its own rules.

University Honors Grant

AmountUp to $2,000EligibilityThe University Honors Grant is for new and current students accepted into the ECSU Honors Program; scholars may receive up to $2,000 annually and must have at least a 3.25 cumulative GPA.

Source

See sources and other schools

How Elizabeth City State compares

665 of 749 verified schools publish at least one four-year renewable merit award.
Elizabeth City State is one of them. The cohort minority (84 schools) only awards one-year scholarships, which means the four-year value families assume on a brochure quote isn't guaranteed at every school.

Sources used on this page

Every claim is checked against Elizabeth City State’s own published materials. Below is the full reference set.

Cost of attendanceElizabeth City State cost-of-attendance worksheet
Merit tiersStrada Leadership Scholarship

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