by our College Data Analytics TeamMany students will not be asked to pay the full, advertised sticker price of a school. Instead, they will be given a financial aid offer that will include a combination of scholarships, grants, loans, and work-study. The sum total of attendance at Northwest Shoals Community College can sound overwhelming, but bear in mind that many students get some type of financial aid.
What financial assistance options will NW-SCC offer you, and what will you qualify for? Read on for more information. Read on to discover what amount of financial assistance could be accessible to you.
Eligibility for aid and scholarships is driven mostly by your household’s income and need. Read on to get a sense of the financial assistance available at Northwest Shoals Community College.
Financial assistance, available as scholarships, loans, and work-study, is a way schools lower the price of attendance so many students can enroll. Some kinds of aid are clearly preferable to others, and outcomes differ across students.
Looking at the entering class at Northwest Shoals Community College, 94% of new full-time first-years were awarded at least some aid some 414 students).
| Type of Aid | % of Freshmen Receiving | Average Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Grant or scholarship aid (all sources) | 80% | $8,090 |
| Institutional grants & scholarships | 37% | $3,527 |
| Federal Pell grants | 64% | $7,934 |
| State/local grants | 17% | $538 |
| Federal student loans | 62% | $2,212 |
The best aid is gift aid: grants and scholarships that carry no repayment obligation. Across the undergraduate body at NW-SCC, around 85% of undergraduate students received gift aid averaging $3,409 (among about 3527 awardees).
| Award | % of Undergrads Receiving | Average Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Grant or scholarship aid (all sources) | 85% | $3,409 |
| Federal Pell grants | 27% | $6,505 |
| Federal student loans | 24% | $2,697 |
Title-IV recipients living on campus saw average grant aid of $8,502.
Because need-based aid scales with family income, what students actually pay differs sharply across income brackets.
| Family Income | Average Net Price |
|---|---|
| $0 – $48,000 | $2,423 |
| $30,001 – $75,000 | $4,762 |
| Over $75,000 | $8,416 |
Remember these are net prices — what families pay after gift aid, not before.
Net price is the cost remaining after grant and scholarship aid is subtracted from the sticker price, and it is the most useful single number for estimating real cost.
| Cohort | Average Net Price |
|---|---|
| On-campus title-IV students | $2,838 |
| Off-campus title-IV students | $4,545 |
For a personalized estimate based on your family’s financial situation, use NW-SCC’s online cost calculator: nwscc.edu/admissions/tuition-fees/.
The median student at NW-SCC graduates with $5,500 in federal student debt.
| Metric | Amount |
|---|---|
| Median federal debt (all student-aid borrowers) | $5,500 |
| Median federal debt (graduates only) | $10,000 |
| Typical 10-year monthly payment (graduates) | $106.02/mo |
Spreading the median graduate debt over a standard 10-year repayment schedule works out to roughly the monthly payment shown above.
Percentiles reveal the spread — half of all borrowers fall between the 25th and 75th percentiles. These percentiles trace how cumulative federal debt is spread among borrowers at NW-SCC.
| Percentile | Cumulative Federal Debt |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile (lowest-debt students) | $1,750 |
| 25th percentile | $3,250 |
| 75th percentile | $11,950 |
| 90th percentile (highest-debt students) | $22,500 |
How much a student borrows depends heavily on family income, first-gen status, and dependency.
Median Debt by Income Bracket
| Income tier | Median federal debt |
|---|---|
| Low income | $5,500 |
| Middle income | $5,500 |
| High income | $5,500 |
By First-Generation Status
| Cohort | Median federal debt |
|---|---|
| First-generation students | $5,500 |
| Continuing-generation students | $5,250 |
Dependent vs Independent Students
| Cohort | Median federal debt |
|---|---|
| Dependent students | $5,500 |
| Independent students | $7,729 |
The figure below distills the debt data into a single burden category for NW-SCC.
Most undergraduate borrowing runs through the federal Stafford loan program. These figures summarize annual Stafford program activity at NW-SCC:
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Stafford loan recipients | 8437 |
| Total Stafford loan amount | $87,639,761 |
Military-affiliated students can tap the Post-9/11 GI Bill and DoD Tuition Assistance.
GI Bill volume
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| GI Bill recipients | 28 |
| Total GI Bill amount | $89,066 |
| Average GI Bill amount per recipient | $3,181 |
References
More about our data sources and methodologies.