Skip to main content

7-1 University Graduate Out-of-State Tuition Merit Award Program

About CMU's "Out-of-state Merit Award policy"

This policy creates a framework to provide Merit Award financial assistant for out-of-state students.

NOTE ABOUT PDF VERSION: The PDF is the official text of the policy. If there are any incongruities between the text of the HTML version and the text within the PDF file, the PDF will be considered accurate and overriding.

BACKGROUND

Central Michigan University accepts many students for graduate study who receive no funding from the university. In fact, approximately 60% of full time CMU graduate students do not receive funding. This is a problem in attracting graduate students, but is an even greater problem in attracting students from outside Michigan. Currently, 78% of our graduate students come from Michigan and, of our U.S. students, 90% come from Michigan. Tuition for a 30 credit master’s program at CMU is approximately $6000 for an in-state student and approximately twice that for an out-of-state student. For a student working on a 90 credit doctoral degree, in- state tuition is over $19,000; again, out-of-state tuition is approximately twice that. It is very likely that we lose many students from outside Michigan, and particularly from outside the U.S., because of our tuition costs coupled with our inability to offer some financial assistance to such students.

PURPOSE

Many highly qualified students from outside of Michigan apply for graduate study at CMU, but they do not receive financial assistance in the form of graduate assistantships or fellowships to come to CMU. The purpose of this policy is to encourage highly qualified students from outside Michigan to attend Central by reducing the total cost of their graduate education. If this program attracts more students from outside Michigan, graduate student numbers, and international student numbers should increase, increasing the tuition paid to colleges.

DEFINITIONS

GRE = Graduate Record Examination

GMAT = Graduate Management Admission Test

MAT = Miller Analogies Test

TOEFL = Test of English as a Foreign Language

POLICY

Any student meeting all three of the requirements listed below will be eligible for an out-of-state tuition award once accepted into a graduate program of study at Central Michigan University:

  1. a GRE verbal score of at least 560 AND a GRE quantitative score of at least 660, OR a GMAT score of 600,
    OR a MAT score of 55
  2. a cumulative undergraduate grade point average of 3.0, and
  3. a TOEFL score of 600 if not a native speaker of English

Out-of-state tuition costs will be waived for an award recipient’s entire academic program, as long as the student remains in good standing overall and in good standing within his/her graduate program.

PROCEDURE

The College of Graduate Studies will code any student who is not a resident of the state of Michigan who meets all three requirements listed in the policy as an in-state student for tuition purposes only once the student has been admitted to a graduate program of study. Students will be monitored each semester for continued eligibility.

Central Michigan University reserves the right to make exceptions to, modify or eliminate this policy. This document supersedes all previous policies, procedures and directives relative to this subject.