I understand that many schools will offer in-state tuition to students after their Post 9/11 GI Bill has exhausted. Does anyone have a list of these schools? For example, I know that Penn State, Michigan, and UC Boulder will offer in-state tuition to any student who uses even a semester of GI Bill benefits. There must be others?
Yes! The VA has set up the Yellow Ribbon program, wherein participating schools agree to give an extra tuition discount to some students using certain GI Bills (the Post 9/11 being the main one) and the VA will match that amount. Sadly, most state schools do not participate. However, a lot of private schools do, and there are a few state schools that do (like the ones you mentioned). The YRP amounts may still not fully cover tuition and may only apply to a limited number of students and/or certain degrees/departments.
There is a whole searchable database available on the VA’s website. Just look up the Yellow Ribbon Program for more information. To get directly to the searchable database, type “Find a Yellow Ribbon school” in your browser. Note that the amounts listed are the amount of tuition (above the amount covered by your GI Bill) that the school will cover; the VA match is not included so just double that number for the actual discount. For instance, if you type in “Rochester Institute of Technology” you’ll see the second gray box on the right indicates that they will cover $13,357 for an undergraduate degree for all eligible students. The VA will match that amount. The rest of RIT’s tuition is covered by the GI Bill, so tuition at RIT is fully covered. Worcester Polytechnic, however only puts up $5,000 per year for 10 students. If you were one of the lucky 10 students, the VA would match that 5,000, so your tuition discount would be 10,000. Subtract that from their $54,416 bill and you get $44,416. Subtract your GB Bill private school tuition amount from that (currently $26,042.81 but it adjusts every year), and you’re left with an out-of-pocket additional cost of $18,373.30 each year. Ouch.
Every school is different and most participating schools have multiple listings (gray boxes) so you have to look carefully at each listing in the YRB database very carefully to make sure it covers the degree type for which you want to use it. The best listings are those that say “Pays remaining tuition that Post 9/11 GI Bill doesn’t cover” for “All eligible students.” With those, you know you won’t be left with any out-of-pocket tuition costs.
Note that this is just for tuition. Room and board are determined by other rules and there is the very small possibility that R&B is not fully covered by the housing allowance under the GI Bill rules. Most schools I have looked at have been fine, but RIT, for example, would leave a student on the hook for a couple hundred dollars each year. For the fully-covered tuition, though, RIT still fantastically generous.
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When my daughter was applying 4 years ago, Auburn let you keep in state tuition after GI Bill benefits ran out.
Yes. Auburn is one of the public schools that pays any remaining tuition not covered by the GI Bill.