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Delaware scholarships and merit aid

Two prices: the posted one, and yours.

Posted price$37,884per year · 2025-2026 · ResidentNon-resident $63,444
Yours?depends on the rules below

The short answer

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

Where does your student land?

Verified Jul 2026
3 school sources to explore

Published rules, with the school sources close at hand. Confirm the details before you count on an award.

The award collection

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.

Where does your student land?

  1. UD Trustee Scholarship$12,500–$15,000 per yearNot automaticRenewable
    Published awardOther selection criteria

    UD Trustee Scholarship

    $12,500–$15,000 per year

    Published rangeNot recorded as automatic on grades and scores. Read the selection rules. Confirm the policy year with the school.

    Start with the award’s published eligibility.

    RenewableCheck the conditions
    Open award details for UD Trustee Scholarship

    Who qualifies

    Top tier of the automatic out-of-state merit chart. No separate application; all out-of-state freshmen are reviewed. Awarded on an internal calculation that is not the same as the high-school reported GPA, so no published stat cutoff.

    How to keep it

    UD does not publish a merit-scholarship renewal GPA on the chart page; renewal language on the SFS site is stated for need-based grants. Confirm renewal terms with Student Financial Services.

  2. UD Presidential Scholarship$10,000–$12,000 per yearNot automaticRenewable
    Published awardOther selection criteria

    UD Presidential Scholarship

    $10,000–$12,000 per year

    Published rangeNot recorded as automatic on grades and scores. Read the selection rules. Confirm the policy year with the school.

    Start with the award’s published eligibility.

    RenewableCheck the conditions
    Open award details for UD Presidential Scholarship

    Who qualifies

    Second tier of the automatic out-of-state merit chart. No separate application required.

    How to keep it

    Renewal terms not published on the merit chart; confirm with Student Financial Services.

  3. UD Provost Scholarship$8,500–$12,000 per yearNot automaticRenewable
    Published awardOther selection criteria

    UD Provost Scholarship

    $8,500–$12,000 per year

    Published rangeNot recorded as automatic on grades and scores. Read the selection rules. Confirm the policy year with the school.

    Start with the award’s published eligibility.

    RenewableCheck the conditions
    Open award details for UD Provost Scholarship

    Who qualifies

    Third tier of the automatic out-of-state merit chart. No separate application required.

    How to keep it

    Renewal terms not published on the merit chart; confirm with Student Financial Services.

  4. Delaware Scholar Award$6,500–$7,500 per yearNot automaticRenewable
    Published awardOther selection criteria

    Delaware Scholar Award

    $6,500–$7,500 per year

    Published rangeNot recorded as automatic on grades and scores. Read the selection rules. Confirm the policy year with the school.

    Start with the award’s published eligibility.

    RenewableCheck the conditions
    Open award details for Delaware Scholar Award

    Who qualifies

    Fourth tier of the automatic out-of-state merit chart. No separate application required.

    How to keep it

    Renewal terms not published on the merit chart; confirm with Student Financial Services.

  5. Blue Hen Scholarship$1,500–$2,500 per yearNot automaticRenewable
    Published awardOther selection criteria

    Blue Hen Scholarship

    $1,500–$2,500 per year

    Published rangeNot recorded as automatic on grades and scores. Read the selection rules. Confirm the policy year with the school.

    Start with the award’s published eligibility.

    RenewableCheck the conditions
    Open award details for Blue Hen Scholarship

    Who qualifies

    Entry tier of the automatic out-of-state merit chart. No separate application required.

    How to keep it

    Renewal terms not published on the merit chart; confirm with Student Financial Services.

Free Merit Check

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The fine print

Outside awardsGrant-first displacement = outside wins can pay the school

Delaware reduces institutional grant before any other aid line when an outside award arrives. A $5,000 community-foundation win can leave the family bill unchanged.

What makes Delaware different

Delaware's public flagship draws a huge Northeast out-of-state applicant pool and gives every admitted out-of-state freshman automatic merit consideration on a named five-tier chart — but the awards top out around $15,000 against a $63,000 non-resident cost, so they soften the bill rather than erase it.

Merit tiers5See who qualifies
Research checkedJul 2026By our research team

Selection beyond grades and scores

Start with the selection process.

These awards are not recorded as automatic on grades and scores. Read each award's selection rules, application steps and dates. Meeting a minimum is not an award offer.

  1. Read the selection rules

    Look for the school's stated criteria and whether an additional application is needed.

  2. Check the application dates

    Confirm the current admission and scholarship deadlines directly with the school.

  3. Know what happens next year

    Check renewal, credit requirements and how other aid affects the award.

The fine print / Three questions to carry forward

Before you count on it.

Does it apply to us? Confirm the entering year, residency and every eligibility condition.

Can we keep it? Check renewal GPA, credits and how long the award lasts.

Can we combine it? Ask how outside scholarships and other school awards change the offer.

Take Delaware's decision sheet

A printable research summary, source links and room for your questions.

See what could change an award

What families often miss

  1. UD states plainly that 'Merit offers are based on an internal calculation that is not the same as high-school reported GPA.' A strong reported GPA does not guarantee a top tier, and there is no published GPA/test grid mapping scores to the Trustee, Presidential, or Provost awards. Treat the chart as a range of possible outcomes, not a formula you can reverse-engineer.

  2. At Delaware it often will not. UD says 'Reduction or cancelation of a scholarship may occur if you receive outside funding designed to offset tuition.' Because UD's own award is built to offset tuition and mandatory fees, a tuition-targeted outside scholarship can reduce or cancel the UD award rather than add to it. Confirm with Student Financial Services before banking the extra dollars.

  3. Out-of-state tuition is about $40,840, but total cost of attendance is $63,444 for 2025-26. A top-tier $15,000 Trustee Scholarship covers roughly a third of tuition and under a quarter of full cost. For Northeast families used to private-school discounting, UD's merit is real but modest — price the net, not the headline number.

See award cutoffs and special programs

UD Trustee Scholarship — Delaware's top automatic merit tier

The UD Trustee Scholarship sits at the top of the University of Delaware's automatic merit chart for out-of-state freshmen, worth $12,500 to $15,000 per year. Like every award on the chart, it requires no separate application — UD states 'A separate application is not required and all out-of-state freshmen are reviewed for these merit scholarships based upon all materials and information supplied with their application.' What trips families up is that UD's merit decision is not driven by the GPA on the transcript: 'Merit offers are based on an internal calculation that is not the same as high-school reported GPA.' So the published chart shows the five award tiers and their dollar ranges, but not a transparent GPA/test cutoff for each one. At the $15,000 ceiling, the Trustee Scholarship covers a bit over a third of the roughly $40,840 non-resident tuition and well under a quarter of the full $63,444 cost of attendance — strong by selective-public standards, but families should price the net cost, not the headline.

Source

See costs and school data

Who this school may work for

Northeast and mid-Atlantic students who want a mid-size public research university and are realistic that out-of-state merit here is a partial discount, not a full ride. Best for families who will compare UD's $1,500-$15,000 automatic award against the non-resident sticker and decide whether the net price still works.

Cost of attendance$37,884–$63,444 for 2025-2026Each bar is the full published cost for that scenario, sized against the highest figure so totals compare at a glance.
Out-of-state, on-campus$63,444
In-state, on-campus$37,884
  • Tuition & fees
  • Housing & food
  • Books
  • Travel
  • Personal
  • Loan fees

Tuition & fees combines tuition plus mandatory full-time fees.

Delaware cost-of-attendance source

Cost and graduation facts

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

Average annual net price by family income at Delaware, academic year 2021-22 — in-state, Title-IV aid recipients only
Family incomeAverage net price paid
$0–$30,000$10,901
$30,001–$48,000$10,099
$48,001–$75,000$13,225
$75,001–$110,000$17,401
$110,001+$25,580
All income levels (average)$17,799

Sticker price vs. what students actually pay

Published tuition & fees (in-state), AY 2022-23
$16,810
Published tuition & fees (out-of-state), AY 2022-23
$41,400
Average net price paid (all Title-IV aid), AY 2021-22
$17,799

That works out to roughly a 42% discount below the federal AY 2021-22 average cost of attendance of $30,952 (College Scorecard — a separate, federally reported figure, not the published cost of attendance shown above).

Delaware 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
81%
First-year retention rate, 2021 cohort
92%
Median debt at completion, 2020–2021 completers
$24,572 (~$261/mo on a 10-yr plan)
Median earnings, 10 years after entry (measured 2020-21)
$72,950
Share of students receiving a Pell grant, AY 2021-22
17%
Share of students receiving a federal loan, AY 2021-22
54%
See other scholarships and cost examples

If your student brings another scholarship

Delaware is unusually explicit that an outside scholarship can REDUCE or CANCEL your institutional award. UD's institutional funding is designed to offset tuition and mandatory fees, so if an outside award is also meant to cover tuition, UD may pull back its own scholarship dollars rather than let you keep both — this is institutional-aid displacement, not loan-first.

Per the Student Financial Services policies page, UD merit scholarships may be reduced or cancelled when a student receives outside funding designed to offset tuition. Because institutional funding is built to offset tuition and mandatory fees, an outside tuition-targeted scholarship can directly cut the UD award. Families counting on stacking an outside award on top of a Trustee or Presidential Scholarship should confirm the treatment with SFS first.

Source

Delaware merit aid FAQ

  • Do I have to apply separately for University of Delaware merit scholarships?

    No. UD states 'A separate application is not required and all out-of-state freshmen are reviewed for these merit scholarships based upon all materials and information supplied with their application.' The five named tiers — Trustee, Presidential, Provost, Delaware Scholar, and Blue Hen — are all awarded automatically through admission review.

  • What GPA do I need for the top UD Trustee Scholarship?

    UD does not publish a GPA cutoff for any merit tier. It says merit offers are 'based on an internal calculation that is not the same as high-school reported GPA,' so there is no public formula. The chart shows the award ranges (Trustee $12,500-$15,000 at the top down to Blue Hen $1,500-$2,500), but not which stats land you in each one.

  • How much will out-of-state merit actually save me?

    The automatic chart runs from $1,500 to $15,000 per year. Against roughly $40,840 in non-resident tuition and a $63,444 total cost of attendance for 2025-26, even the top Trustee award covers about a third of tuition. UD merit meaningfully softens the out-of-state price but does not approach a full ride.

  • Will an outside scholarship reduce my Delaware award?

    It can. UD explicitly states 'Reduction or cancelation of a scholarship may occur if you receive outside funding designed to offset tuition.' Because UD institutional funding is built to offset tuition and mandatory fees, a tuition-targeted outside award may cut your UD scholarship instead of stacking on top. Check with Student Financial Services before counting on both.

See sources and other schools

How Delaware compares

  • 19 of 749 verified schools in our dataset use grant-first displacement.

    Delaware is in the small minority (19 schools share this category). That framing matters when comparing peer schools that may publish the policy differently or not at all.

  • Grant-first displacement is the rarest published policy in our dataset.

    It also produces the worst family-dollar outcome on outside scholarships. Delaware sits in this small minority, so treat outside-award strategy here as conservatively as you would at a school with no published policy at all.

  • 665 of 749 verified schools publish at least one four-year renewable merit award.

    Delaware 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 Delaware’s own published materials. Below is the full reference set.

Compare with similar schools

Keep exploring Delaware merit aid

The next chapter

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