Knox College · Illinois

Knox College scholarships and merit aid

Knox offers merit awards for strong students and those with special talents, but full scholarships are limited.

Verified Jul 20261 month ago

The short answer

Is Knox College worth a closer look?

Knox College is worth checking if your student has strong grades or scores. We found 6 published awards, and 2 are based on those numbers.

Merit tiers62 based on grades or scores

First-year students with school awards10%First-year students, CDS 2025-2026 (school-estimated)

Research checkedJul 2026By our research team

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Checking merit aid at Knox College

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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.

$5,000

Rothwell Stephens Scholarship In Mathematics

Apply separatelyCan continue

Source

$5,000

Phi Theta Kappa Scholarship

Apply separatelyCan continue

Source

$3,000

Colorado Alumni Scholarship

Apply separately

Source

Up to $8,000

Special Talent Scholarship

Apply separately

Source

$44,000–$50,000

Academic Merit Scholarship First Year

Based on grades or scores

Source

Up to $48,000

Transfer Academic Merit Scholarship

Based on grades or scores

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 Knox College's published information.

Outside awardsNo published displacement order
Knox College's policy doesn't specify whether outside scholarships hit loans, grants, or only the COA ceiling. Get a written aid-office answer before chasing private awards.

See costs and school data

Who this school may work for

Academically accomplished students and those with notable talents—including community college transfers—should apply for Knox's merit aid, which rewards achievement rather than offering comprehensive coverage.

Published yearly cost: Approximately $74,963 for 2026-2027. Source

Cost and graduation facts

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

Average annual net price by family income at Knox College, academic year 2021-22
Family income	Average net price paid
$0–$30,000	$17,134
$30,001–$48,000	$17,363
$48,001–$75,000	$23,844
$75,001–$110,000	$25,402
$110,001+	$31,983
All income levels (average)	$24,595

Sticker price vs. what students actually pay

Published tuition & fees, AY 2022-23: $57,903
Average net price paid (all Title-IV aid), AY 2021-22: $24,595

That works out to roughly a 64% discount below the federal AY 2021-22 average cost of attendance of $68,134 (College Scorecard — a separate, federally reported figure, not the published cost of attendance shown above).

Outcomes for students who enrolled here

Graduation rate (150% of normal time), 2016 cohort: 68%
First-year retention rate, 2021 cohort: 83%
Median debt at completion, 2020–2021 completers: $27,000 (~$286/mo on a 10-yr plan)
Median earnings, 10 years after entry (measured 2020-21): $54,820
Share of students receiving a Pell grant, AY 2021-22: 37%
Share of students receiving a federal loan, AY 2021-22: 76%

How to read these numbers

Net price reflects only first-time, full-time, degree-seeking students who received federal Title IV financial aid — not Knox College'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 Knox College'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

If your student brings another scholarship

The combination of Knox scholarships and grants and federal and state grants cannot exceed the cost of tuition.

The combination of Knox scholarships and grants and federal and state grants cannot exceed the cost of tuition.

Source

More school data

From the Knox College Common Data Set 2025-2026 (school-estimated figures):

Merit penetrationHow likely is merit aid here?From Knox College’s Common Data Set: the share of first-year students who receive institutional merit and the average dollar amount when they do.

10%of admitsget merit

Average award$49,400Covers ~66% of $74,963 cost of attendance

At Knox College, roughly 1 in 10 first-year admits receive institutional merit aid. The average award is $49,400 — about 66% of total cost.

As filed in Knox College's CDS Section H2A: of 302 first-time, full-time degree-seeking freshmen, 30 had no financial need and received institutional merit (non-need) scholarship or grant aid, averaging $49,400. Across all full-time degree-seeking undergraduates: 245 of 1,095, averaging $40,638. Athletic awards are excluded per the CDS definition.

The 2025-2026 column is marked "estimated" in the school's own CDS filing — school-projected figures, not final audited counts.

Receive institutional merit10%First-year students, Common Data Set 2025-2026 (school-estimated)

Average merit award$49,400Across recipients, Common Data Set 2025-2026 (school-estimated)

Source: Common Data Set 2025-2026 (verified 2026-07-23)

See sources and other schools

How Knox College compares

133 of 749 verified schools in our dataset use unclear or unpublished displacement.
Knox College is in a recognizable cluster (133 schools share this category). That framing matters when comparing peer schools that may publish the policy differently or not at all.
133 of 749 verified schools publish no clear displacement order.
Knox College is one of them. The right move is the aid-office email script below, not a guess.
665 of 749 verified schools publish at least one four-year renewable merit award.
Knox College 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 Knox College’s own published materials. Below is the full reference set.

Policy pageKnox College stacking policy
Cost of attendanceKnox College cost-of-attendance worksheet
Merit tiersPhi Theta Kappa Scholarship

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Keep exploring Knox College merit aid

Knox College scholarship stacking. Whether outside awards land as upside or quietly displace institutional aid.
Does Knox College displace outside scholarships?. The dollar math on a $5,000 outside award, plus peer schools that handle it differently.