Wilkes University · Pennsylvania

Wilkes scholarships and merit aid

Wilkes rewards regional ties, family connections, and transfer students who excel academically.

Verified Jul 20262 months ago

The short answer

Is Wilkes worth a closer look?

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

Merit tiers8See who qualifies

First-year students with school awards11%First-year students, CDS 2025-2026 (school-estimated)

Research checkedJul 2026By our research team

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Students with ties to the Berks County or Lehigh Valley areas will find strong support here. Transfer students and those with family legacies at Wilkes also benefit from dedicated awards.

Published yearly cost: Approximately $42,764 for 2026-2027. Source

Cost and graduation facts

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

Average annual net price by family income at Wilkes, academic year 2021-22
Family income	Average net price paid
$0–$30,000	$25,062
$30,001–$48,000	$23,440
$48,001–$75,000	$26,432
$75,001–$110,000	$27,843
$110,001+	$31,638
All income levels (average)	$27,743

Sticker price vs. what students actually pay

Published tuition & fees, AY 2022-23: $43,496
Average net price paid (all Title-IV aid), AY 2021-22: $27,743

That works out to roughly a 51% discount below the federal AY 2021-22 average cost of attendance of $56,765 (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: 63%
First-year retention rate, 2021 cohort: 72%
Median debt at completion, 2020–2021 completers: $26,000 (~$276/mo on a 10-yr plan)
Median earnings, 10 years after entry (measured 2020-21): $63,454
Share of students receiving a Pell grant, AY 2021-22: 43%
Share of students receiving a federal loan, AY 2021-22: 78%

How to read these numbers

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

More school data

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

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

11%of admitsget merit

Average award$28,097Covers ~66% of $42,764 cost of attendance

At Wilkes, roughly 1 in 9 first-year admits receive institutional merit aid. The average award is $28,097 — about 66% of total cost.

As filed in Wilkes's CDS Section H2A: of 560 first-time, full-time degree-seeking freshmen, 61 had no financial need and received institutional merit (non-need) scholarship or grant aid, averaging $28,097. Across all full-time degree-seeking undergraduates: 173 of 1,885, averaging $26,326. 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 merit11%First-year students, Common Data Set 2025-2026 (school-estimated)

Average merit award$28,097Across recipients, Common Data Set 2025-2026 (school-estimated)

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

Other Wilkes scholarships worth checking

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

Phi Theta Kappa Scholarship

Amount$2,000EligibilityThe Phi Theta Kappa Scholarship is awarded to transfer students who are members of Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society, in addition to the transfer scholarship listed above; proof of PTK membership must be submitted with the admission application, and the award is $2,000.

Source

See sources and other schools

How Wilkes compares

665 of 749 verified schools publish at least one four-year renewable merit award.
Wilkes 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 Wilkes’s own published materials. Below is the full reference set.

Cost of attendanceWilkes cost-of-attendance worksheet
Merit tiersSpark Scholars Award
Merit tiersDean Scholarship

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