Esther I. Brown
dynamic, detail-oriented creativeC-VILLE Issue #18.13
Issue #18.13 :: 03/28/2006 – 04/03/2006
AccessUVa grows 187 percent
233 low-income students get loan-free education
According to President John Casteen’s annual report, with 3,100 freshman and 300 transfer students, the 2005 entering class is “the most socioeconomically diverse entering class in [UVA] history.” The class also boasts a record-high number of participants in AccessUVa: 787.
When AccessUVa (which provides grants covering tuition, fees, books, meals, etc.) was introduced in 2003, any student with a household income one-and-a-half times the federal poverty level (or less) qualified for the program. Now, with the recent expansion of AcessUVa, families with annual incomes below $37,700 (give or take) qualify for the grants, which are valued at $16,714 per year for in-state students and $33,414 for out-of-state students.
This expansion helped increase the number of qualifying students nearly two-fold, bringing the number of entering students receiving full support to 233—nearly 7 percent of the class.
While UVA pledges to meet 100 percent of any admitted student’s demonstrated need, for many students the aid still comes in the form of student loans. However, AccessUVa has improved participants’ financial picture by capping loans at approximately 25 percent of UVA’s in-state cost, and funding the rest with grants. In addition, both in-state and out-of-state students are given the same low cap level for loans—a welcome surprise for out-of-state applicants.
In 2005 the UVA Board of Visitors, the University’s governing body, allocated an additional $2.1 million for AccessUVa, bringing the annual commitment to the program to $13.3 million for this fiscal year. According to the Casteen’s report, when fully implemented in 2009, AccessUVa should count on receiving more than $20 million annually.
—Esther Brown
