How to Complete and Submit the VTAG Application: Virginia Tuition Assistance Grant

To apply for the Virginia Tuition Assistance Grant, pick up the VTAG application from the financial aid office at your participating private, nonprofit Virginia college, fill it out with your residency and identification details, and return it to that same office. Do not send it to SCHEV. For new and readmitted students, the deadline that matters is July 31: applications in by that date share top funding priority with returning recipients, and anything later drops into tiers where money may run out.

Where to Get the Form

The application is a short form available from your school’s financial aid office or on your institution’s website. For the 2026–27 year, SCHEV has also posted the form on its own site. If you qualify under Virginia’s Tuition Equity provision (§ 23.1-505.1) rather than through traditional domicile, there is a separate Tuition Equity version of the form; ask your financial aid office which one applies to you.¹

Confirm You’re Eligible Before You Apply

Three conditions have to line up. You must be domiciled in Virginia for at least one full year before your term starts, enrolled full-time as a degree-seeking student at a participating private nonprofit institution, and pursuing an eligible program. Part-time students are not eligible. Undergraduates can study almost anything except religious training or theological education (the CIP 39-series). Graduate and first-professional students are limited to health-related professional programs in the CIP 51-series, which covers fields like medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, veterinary medicine, and nursing.¹

On the residency piece, if your semester begins September 1, your Virginia domicile has to have been established no later than September 1 of the previous year and kept continuously since. Active-duty military stationed in Virginia, military retirees who lived here at retirement, surviving spouses, veterans who have chosen Virginia as their permanent home, and their dependents can skip the one-year wait as long as domicile is established before the term begins.²

Students who do not have traditional domiciliary status may still qualify through the Tuition Equity pathway if they attended a Virginia high school for at least two years, graduated or passed an equivalency exam on or after July 1, 2008, and have at least two years of Virginia income tax filings (their own or a parent’s) before enrolling. Students on F, J student/trainee, H-iii, or M visas are excluded.³

One more boundary worth knowing before you apply: VTAG has lifetime caps. You get up to two years at the associate’s level, four years total for a bachelor’s (counting any associate’s time), three years for most graduate programs, and three or four years for first-professional programs depending on the field. No mix of graduate and professional study can run past four VTAG years combined.⁴

What You Need to Fill It Out

The form is built to prove you are genuinely domiciled in Virginia, so most of what it asks for is dates. Pull your records together before you start, and use exact dates from documents rather than estimates. Wrong or missing information is one of the most common reasons an application stalls or gets denied.

Your Social Security Number.
Your Virginia street address (your permanent home in the Commonwealth).
The issue date of your Virginia driver’s license.
The date you registered any motor vehicles in Virginia.
Your Virginia voter registration date, if you are registered.
Confirmation that you (or your parent, if you are a dependent student) have filed Virginia income tax returns, and how many years.
Your employer’s name and location, or your parent’s, to show Virginia ties.

The financial aid office uses these entries to verify the one-year domicile requirement. Check each one against the actual document before you submit.

Where to Submit It

The completed form goes to the financial aid office at your institution. SCHEV runs the program statewide, but it does not take applications directly; your school receives the form, verifies your enrollment, and certifies your eligibility.¹

Deadlines and Priority Tiers

State funding is finite, so VTAG uses a four-tier priority system. Students in higher tiers are fully funded before any money moves to the next.⁴

Returning students who received VTAG the previous year, including those transferring between participating schools or stepping up to a new degree level, hold the highest priority. They are not bound by the July 31 deadline but still have to meet their institution’s deadline.
First-time and readmitted students who submit a completed application by July 31 share that top priority.
New or readmitted applications arriving after July 31 through September 15 are funded only if money remains after the first two groups are fully awarded.
Applications received after September 15 through December 1 are considered last and can only produce a spring-semester-only award.

If you are new, get the form in before July 31. Missing it does not make you ineligible, but it moves you into a tier where funding is not guaranteed. December 1 is the absolute final cutoff, and by then only a half-year award is possible.⁴

What Happens After You Submit

VTAG money never comes to you as a check. SCHEV advances a share of each institution’s estimated allocation at the start of the term. After the census date, your school confirms you are still enrolled full-time and otherwise eligible, and the funds are credited directly to your student account to reduce your tuition balance. Schools must move funds onto student accounts within 20 working days of receiving them.⁵

Drop below full-time enrollment or lose eligibility after the census date, and the school has to return your award to SCHEV. The grant can only be applied to your tuition account; the institution holds it in trust for the Commonwealth, so it cannot be redirected to room, board, or other charges.

1
Virginia State Council Of Higher Education, VA. Virginia Tuition Assistance Grant Program
2
Virginia State Council Of Higher Education, VA. Guidelines for In-State Residency and Tuition
3
Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 23.1-505.1 – Eligibility for In-State Tuition
4
Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Administrative Code – Chapter 71 Virginia Tuition Assistance Grant Program Regulations
5
Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Administrative Code 8VAC40-71-30 – Disbursement of Funds