The scholarship, announced by Cuomo last January, provides certain students attending SUNY and City University of New York (CUNY) institutions with free tuition. Tuition is the charge for instruction at a university, and doesn’t include fees like room and board. Excelsior is a last-dollar scholarship, which means it fills the gap not covered by other scholarships, the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) or federal Pell Grants.
According to information obtained by Pipe Dream from BU’s Financial Aid Services office, approximately 27 percent of BU students who received the scholarship got the maximum award amount of $5,500. Awards ranging from $1 to $5,499 were received by roughly 34 percent of students. The final 39 percent of students who qualified for the scholarship received $0 in Excelsior funding because their tuition was already covered by other scholarships or grants.
Students had to meet a number of requirements to be accepted, the foremost a family income of $100,00 per year or less. The family income cap is set to rise to $110,000 in fall 2018 and $125,000 in fall 2019. In 2018, 2,097 BU students are expected to be eligible; that number increases to 2,566 by the fall of 2019, according the Financial Aid Services office.
Students also must have earned at least 12 credits per semester and 30 per year, been a resident of New York state for at least 12 months prior to application and be on track to complete a two- or four-year degree.
To process scholarship recipients, BU’s Financial Aid Services office worked with SUNY, the New York state Higher Education Services Corporation (HESC) and BU’s Information Technology Services to process scholarship recipients. After students applied for the Excelsior Scholarship through HESC this summer, their income was verified and a list of eligible students was provided to BU. The Financial Aid Services office provided credit verification to HESC, which then determined overall eligibility based on both family income and credit requirements. BU received a second list of eligible students and calculated the award based on each student’s financial aid package. According to Amber Stallman, director of financial aid and student records, the new scholarship placed pressure on the Financial Aid Services office at the start of the fall semester.
“The start of the semester is always a busy time for us and there were certainly questions from students and families regarding the Excelsior scholarship,” Stallman wrote in an email. “I am very proud of how our team handled the implementation and absorbed the new program into our daily operations.”
Scholarships are still being awarded by HESC, but the bulk of awards for this year arrived in time for the start of the semester.