Lake Forest College (IL) awards automatic merit scholarships up to $37,000/yr (holistic, no application) but restricts them to TUITION AND FEES, while qualified Illinois residents can get 100% of tuition and fees covered through the Forester Flagship Program. (DRAFT)
Verified Jul 20262 months ago
The short answer
Is Lake Forest worth a closer look?
Lake Forest may be worth checking, but its awards do not follow a simple grades-and-scores chart. Start with the published scholarships below.
Merit tiers5See who qualifies
First-year students with school awards20%First-year students, CDS 2024-2025 (school-estimated)
Research checkedJul 2026By our research team
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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.
Up to $37,000…Up to $37,000 ($36,000 if test-optional)
Academic Merit Scholarships (e.g., Presidential)
Apply separatelyCan continue
GPA
Based on GPA or test scores plus holistic review (no readable grid published)
SAT
Test-optional
ACT
Test-optional (interview required if not submitting scores)
See who qualifies and how to keep it+
Who qualifies
No application — automatically applied to the award package based on the college application; awarded at admission
How to keep it
Guaranteed for all four years with continued full-time enrollment and a minimum cumulative GPA of 2.0 (plus SAP); renewal decisions made every spring.
Notes
RESTRICTED TO TUITION AND FEES — cannot apply to room/board. The on-page scholarship grid is a broken/stale image labeled for Fall 2025 entrants, so no specific GPA/test dollar tiers could be read from the official page.
Admitted first-year student for Fall 2026 planning to study Physics; requires an application
How to keep it
Forester (departmental) scholarships are renewed by the respective department conditional on meeting the scholarship requirements; reviewed every spring.
These are the rules we would flag for your family. Each comes from Lake Forest's published information.
Renewal ruleAcademic Merit Scholarships (e.g., Presidential): renewal floor that quietly knocks awards out
Guaranteed for all four years with continued full-time enrollment and a minimum cumulative GPA of 2.0 (plus SAP); renewal decisions made every spring. A single rough term can end a four-year award here without warning if the GPA floor isn't met cumulatively.
Aid capHard $74,702 cost-of-attendance ceiling
Institutional aid at Lake Forest cannot push the package past $74,702. Big outside wins can mathematically reduce institutional grant once the ceiling is reached.
What families often miss
Lake Forest merit scholarships (e.g., the Presidential Scholarship) are restricted to TUITION AND FEES — they cannot be applied to housing or food, so your room-and-board cost is not reduced by the merit award.
The Forester Flagship Program covers 100% of tuition and fees only for QUALIFIED ILLINOIS first-year and transfer students — out-of-state applicants are not eligible for this lane.
The on-page grid is a broken/placeholder image and is explicitly labeled as applying only to first-year students entering in Fall 2025 — it is stale and not machine-readable. Test-optional applicants are still considered for up to $36,000 via holistic review (interview required), and the headline merit cap is up to $37,000.
Merit scholarships are awarded at admission with no separate application and are guaranteed for four years as long as you maintain full-time enrollment and a 2.0 cumulative GPA (reviewed each spring).
The Jensen Physics Scholarship ($3,000-$8,000) and Carnegie English Essay Contest ($2,500) are only for admitted Fall 2026 first-years in those fields and require applying/participating; fine-arts (music, studio art, theater) awards are talent-based.
See costs and school data+
Who this school may work for
Strong applicants get an automatic merit award (up to $37,000, or $36,000 test-optional) applied to tuition and fees; qualified Illinois residents should target the Forester Flagship (100% tuition + fees), and English/physics students can add a departmental award. (DRAFT)
Published yearly cost: Approximately $74,702 for 2026-2027. Source
Cost and graduation facts
Federal reporting on who actually enrolls at Lake Forest, what they paid after aid, and what happened next — independent of anything the school markets.
Average annual net price by family income at Lake Forest, academic year 2021-22
Family income
Average net price paid
$0–$30,000
$19,605
$30,001–$48,000
$20,210
$48,001–$75,000
$21,481
$75,001–$110,000
$26,055
$110,001+
$35,341
All income levels (average)
$28,673
Sticker price vs. what students actually pay
Published tuition & fees, AY 2022-23
$56,402
Average net price paid (all Title-IV aid), AY 2021-22
$28,673
That works out to roughly a 59% discount below the federal AY 2021-22 average cost of attendance of $70,655 (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
78%
First-year retention rate, 2021 cohort
90%
Median debt at completion, 2020–2021 completers
$26,158 (~$277/mo on a 10-yr plan)
Median earnings, 10 years after entry (measured 2020-21)
$61,825
Share of students receiving a Pell grant, AY 2021-22
30%
Share of students receiving a federal loan, AY 2021-22
70%
See other scholarships and cost examples+
If your student brings another scholarship
Academic merit scholarships are restricted to tuition and fees (they cannot offset room and board). They are combined with financial aid into an award package. The Forester Flagship Program bundles grants + scholarships to cover 100% of tuition and fees for qualified Illinois students.
Merit scholarships apply only to tuition and fees; the page does not state how outside scholarships are treated (a separate Outside Scholarships page exists).
From the Lake Forest Common Data Set 2024-2025 (school-estimated figures):
Merit penetrationHow likely is merit aid here?From Lake Forest’s Common Data Set: the share of first-year students who receive institutional merit and the average dollar amount when they do.
20%of admitsget merit
Average award$33,950Covers ~45% of $74,702 cost of attendance
At Lake Forest, roughly 1 in 5 first-year admits receive institutional merit aid. The average award is $33,950 — about 45% of total cost.
As filed in Lake Forest's CDS Section H2A: of 415 first-time, full-time degree-seeking freshmen, 81 had no financial need and received institutional merit (non-need) scholarship or grant aid, averaging $33,950. Across all full-time degree-seeking undergraduates: 428 of 1,793, averaging $32,850. Athletic awards are excluded per the CDS definition.
The 2024-2025 column is marked "estimated" in the school's own CDS filing — school-projected figures, not final audited counts.
Receive institutional merit20%First-year students, Common Data Set 2024-2025 (school-estimated)
Average merit award$33,950Across recipients, Common Data Set 2024-2025 (school-estimated)
Up to $37,000 per year in merit-based scholarships (up to $36,000 if you apply test-optional). Awards are automatic from your application — no separate scholarship application. They are restricted to tuition and fees.
Is there a full-tuition option?
Yes — the Forester Flagship Program covers 100% of tuition and fees through grants and scholarships, but only for qualified Illinois first-year and transfer students.
How do I keep my scholarship?
Academic scholarships renew for four years with continued full-time enrollment and a minimum cumulative GPA of 2.0; renewal is reviewed every spring.
What does Lake Forest cost?
For 2026-27, tuition is $60,204 (tuition + fees subtotal $61,156), and total tuition and charges including room and board are $74,702.
See sources and other schools+
How Lake Forest compares
235 of 749 verified schools in our dataset use cost-of-attendance cap displacement.
Lake Forest is in a recognizable cluster (235 schools share this category). That framing matters when comparing peer schools that may publish the policy differently or not at all.
665 of 749 verified schools publish at least one four-year renewable merit award.
Lake Forest 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 Lake Forest’s own published materials. Below is the full reference set.
