Hardship Scholarships
Your generosity helps students overcome adversity.
Your generosity helps students overcome adversity.
You have the power to be a difference-maker for Tommies facing unexpected barriers. Hardship Scholarships help Tommies in need continue their education, even when unexpected barriers cross their paths.
Life can change in an instant. A lost job, a medical emergency, or a family crisis — these challenges can put a student's future at risk. At St. Thomas, we believe no Tommie should have to put their education on hold due to unforeseen financial hardship. Hardship scholarships are awarded to students who are experiencing difficulty with paying tuition and fees, usually due to a change in their financial circumstances. These scholarships are awarded outside the regular financial aid/scholarship process. Hardship scholarships may be applied to any expense that appears on a student's bill from the university. These expenses including tuition, fees, room, and board.
Donors have the power to make a tremendous impact with their gifts to support scholarships. A gift to the St. Thomas Hardship Scholarship Fund provides unrestricted, flexible scholarship funds that can be awarded quickly to students experiencing financial hardship so that they can enroll or remain at the university and successfully complete their degrees.
will incur financial hardship each year.
are experiencing job insecurity.
Maddie ’20I rely on my three jobs to carry out my financial needs each month as a student. I may face eviction threats if I am not able to make my payments. Thank you to those who are working hard to provide students with relief during this time.
After discussing with a financial aid counselor, students can submit an appeal either using an online form for the Special Circumstances Fund or by sending an email to Financial Aid. Scholarship appeals are reviewed on a weekly basis throughout the year through the Office of Student Financial Aid. A committee reviews appeals and decides on recipients and award amounts.
Submitted appeals vary from a handful to 20-30 per week. On average, Financial Aid receives 10 appeals per week or 500 per year. The pandemic brought an uptick in requests and although COVID-19 has less direct effect now, we still see a consistent number of requests for hardship support.
All St. Thomas students are eligible to file an appeal. Most appeals result from a student's changing circumstances, such as death or illness of a parent, parent business or job loss, the student's own job loss, and physical or mental health issues requiring expensive treatment.
Hardship financial aid depends on the amount of need and available funding. On average, awards range from $1,000 to $2,000 but rarely cover the full amount the student needs.
Awards are made for a single year. In some cases, a student's financial difficulties may be temporary while in others, they may span more than one year of the student’s time at St. Thomas. In this case, the student needs to reapply each year to be considered for a hardship scholarship.
No. We rely on the generosity of donors to help support the Hardship Scholarship Fund and help as many students who submit requests as possible.