University of Alaska Anchorage · Alaska

University of Alaska Anchorage scholarships and merit aid

UAA rewards strong academics and Alaska residency with multiple scholarship pathways.

Verified Jul 20262 months ago

The short answer

Is University of Alaska Anchorage worth a closer look?

University of Alaska Anchorage 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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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.

$1,000

National Merit Scholarship

Apply separatelyCan continue

Source

$3,000–$7,000

Alaska Performance Scholarship

Apply separatelyCan continue

Source

See costs and school data

Who this school may work for

High-achieving students, especially Alaska residents, who want a quality public university education with meaningful merit support.

Published yearly cost: Approximately $40,204 for 2026-2027. Source

Cost and graduation facts

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

Average annual net price by family income at University of Alaska Anchorage, academic year 2021-22 — in-state, Title-IV aid recipients only
Family income	Average net price paid
$0–$30,000	$11,582
$30,001–$48,000	$13,401
$48,001–$75,000	$16,662
$75,001–$110,000	$18,826
$110,001+	$20,975
All income levels (average)	$15,301

Sticker price vs. what students actually pay

Published tuition & fees (in-state), AY 2022-23: $7,738
Published tuition & fees (out-of-state), AY 2022-23: $21,322
Average net price paid (all Title-IV aid), AY 2021-22: $15,301

That works out to roughly a 36% discount below the federal AY 2021-22 average cost of attendance of $24,096 (College Scorecard — a separate, federally reported figure, not the published cost of attendance shown above).

University of Alaska Anchorage 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: 30%
First-year retention rate, 2021 cohort: 71%
Median debt at completion, 2020–2021 completers: $20,210 (~$214/mo on a 10-yr plan)
Median earnings, 10 years after entry (measured 2020-21): $51,871
Share of students receiving a Pell grant, AY 2021-22: 30%
Share of students receiving a federal loan, AY 2021-22: 17%

How to read these numbers

Net price reflects only first-time, full-time, degree-seeking students who received federal Title IV financial aid — not University of Alaska Anchorage'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 University of Alaska Anchorage'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 University of Alaska Anchorage scholarships worth checking

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

Academic Honors Housing Scholarship

Amount$1,500EligibilityThe Academic Honors Housing Scholarship provides a $750 housing discount, or $1,500 annually, automatically to UA Scholar recipients and University Honors College students living on campus in both fall and spring semesters.

Source

See sources and other schools

How University of Alaska Anchorage compares

665 of 749 verified schools publish at least one four-year renewable merit award.
University of Alaska Anchorage 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.
132 of 749 verified schools publish a dedicated National Merit Finalist package.
University of Alaska Anchorage is one of them. NMF packages typically carry their own stacking and renewal carve-outs separate from the standard automatic merit ladder; confirm those before assuming the headline NMF value is final.

Sources used on this page

Every claim is checked against University of Alaska Anchorage’s own published materials. Below is the full reference set.

Cost of attendanceUniversity of Alaska Anchorage cost-of-attendance worksheet
Merit tiersNational Merit Scholarship

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