UAMS Veteran Non-Resident Tuition Waiver

Eligible: New and Continuing CHP Students who are veterans and non-Arkansas residents

Background and Purpose

In 2014, Congress enacted legislation that provides for in-state tuition to certain veterans and dependents who ordinarily would not qualify as state resident for tuition purposes. Arkansas’ 90th General Assembly passed comparison legislation in 2015. Accordingly, UAMS established the Veteran Non-Resident Tuition Waiver for the following purposes:

  1. To help defray rising educational costs for UAMS students who are veterans of the US military, or who are the children or spouse of a veteran of the armed forces.
  2. Meet State of Arkansas and US policies requiring that no veteran or their families pay out-of-state tuition.

Policy: Student veterans who present documentation of their service in any of the branches of the armed forces and who are legal residents of other states will be granted a waiver of the out-of-state amount of tuition. Students who are veterans must pay all the applicable fees for the course of study that they have chosen. The veteran student’s resident status (state of legal residence) will not be affected and will be categorized as out-of-state (non-resident) for admissions and all other classification purposes.

Eligibility Criteria

The veteran applicant must:

  1. be accepted by, or enrolled in, a UAMS college of the Graduate School for the period for which he/she is applying for the tuition waiver;
  2. have been honorably discharged or released from at least 90 days of active service;
  3. have been honorably discharged less than three years before his/her date of enrollment in the applicable course/program.

Application and Processing

  1. The applicant must submit a completed Veteran Tuition Waiver Application to the Office of the University Registrar no less than 10 business days prior to the first day of the term for which the applicant is requesting the waiver.
  2. The applicant must provide an acceptable form of legal documentation regarding veteran status, which establishes eligibility.
  3. The Office of the University Registrar will verify the application and documentation
  4. The tuition waiver will be valid for every term in which the student enrolls until she/he completes or leaves the program, provided the student remains in good standing.
  5. Amount of the Waiver: The waiver will reduce the amount of tuition from the non-resident tuition rate to the resident tuition rate for the program to which the applicant has been accepted.
  6. The tuition waiver cannot be used as cash or as a credit to a student’s account, only as a reduction in the amount/debt payable to UAMS for tuition at the in-state rate.
  7. No other non-resident tuition waiver programs can be applied at the same time to compound the tuition reduction
  8. Awards are not automatically transferable from one program to another or from one college to another. However, a waiver granted by one program/college does not disqualify a student from being eligible to apply to a second program/college.