TL;DR: Two layers of aid reach private university students, and most guides only cover the second. The national layer: Section 7 of RA 10931 extends the Tertiary Education Subsidy to students in private HEIs, worth PHP 27,000 an academic year under UniFAST MC 01 s. 2026, and Section 8 opens a UniFAST student loan for them; DOST-SEI science scholarships publish a monthly stipend of PHP 8,000 plus up to PHP 40,000 a year in tuition and school fees. The institutional layer: Ateneo, DLSU and UST each publish named programmes with real criteria, and those are the ones to read rather than any summary.
Start with the national layer
Most families begin with the university and work outward. The reverse order is better, because national aid follows you regardless of which private school you choose, and it changes what you can afford to consider.
The Tertiary Education Subsidy
Section 7 of RA 10931, the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, establishes the TES for all Filipino students who shall enrol in undergraduate post-secondary programmes of SUCs, LUCs, private HEIs and all TVIs. It is administered by the UniFAST Board, and funded through the budgets of CHED and TESDA.
The prioritisation is written into the section. Priority goes first to students who are part of households included in Listahanan 2.0, ranked according to estimated per capita household income, and then to students not part of Listahanan 2.0, ranked according to estimated per capita household income based on submitted documentation of proof of income to be determined by the UniFAST Board. That prioritisation does not apply to students in cities and municipalities with no existing SUC or LUC campus — a provision that matters if you live somewhere with no state university nearby.
Section 4 of UniFAST Memorandum Circular No. 01, series of 2026, puts the amount at PHP 13,500 a semester, or PHP 27,000 an academic year, for a private HEI grantee in the top prioritisation tier, against PHP 20,000 a year at a SUC or LUC. A grantee with a disability gets an extra PHP 10,000 a year under TES-3A, and a grantee in a licensure course can claim a one-time reimbursement of up to PHP 8,000 under TES-3B. There is no peso income cap at any point.
This is the single most important thing to know about paying for a private university: there is a national subsidy explicitly written to reach you there, and it pays more at a private school than at a state one.
The UniFAST student loan
Section 8 establishes a student loan programme for tertiary education for all Filipino students enrolling in SUCs, LUCs, private HEIs and TESDA-registered TVET programmes, administered by the UniFAST Board. It may be short-term or long-term. Someone who used a loan as an undergraduate may take another cycle for graduate study, including medicine and law, once the first is fully repaid, and someone who did not may use it for graduate study directly. The section also allows the loan to cover review expenses for licensure examinations administered by PRC.
DOST-SEI science and engineering scholarships
If your course is in the sciences, mathematics or engineering, this is often the largest single award available, and it is portable across identified universities including private ones.
There are two undergraduate tracks:
- The RA 7687 programme, for poor but deserving students whose family annual gross income does not exceed the poverty threshold, taking a course in science, mathematics or engineering leading to a Bachelor of Science degree.
- The Merit programme, sometimes called the undergraduate scientific manpower development programme, for incoming freshmen pursuing priority courses in the basic sciences, applied sciences, physics teaching and engineering at identified universities, where family annual gross income exceeds the regional poverty threshold.
DOST regional offices publish the benefits as a monthly stipend of PHP 8,000 and tuition and school fees of up to PHP 40,000 per academic year, plus a learning and connectivity allowance, a one-time uniform allowance, a thesis allowance, a transportation allowance and a graduation allowance. Applicants sit a national qualifying examination, so the deadline is tied to that examination rather than to enrolment.
There is a service obligation attached to DOST scholarships. Ask about its length and terms before you accept, not after.
The older statute that still names private education
RA 6728, the Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education Act, predates RA 10931 by nearly three decades and remains the statutory basis for two things worth knowing.
PESFA. Section 8 established the voucher system of the Private Education Student Financial Assistance programme, covering degree and vocational or technical courses. The Act required an expanding share of enrolling first-year students to benefit from a full or partial scholarship plus an allowance, with assistance granted to deserving underprivileged students selected on the basis of family income, geographic spread and the results of competitive examinations, and allocated equitably across provinces and cities in line with regional and national plans and priority courses.
Tuition supplements for continuing students. Section 9 provides tuition fee supplements, through a voucher system, for non-freshmen students of private colleges and universities in priority course programmes. This is the provision families most often overlook, because scholarship attention concentrates on entry.
Section 3 sets the criteria the whole assistance framework rests on: tuition fees charged by the schools, the socio-economic needs of each region, overall school performance, the academic qualifications and financial needs of students, and the geographic spread and size of the student population.
The practical implication is that "priority course" is a live category in Philippine student aid. Two students at the same private university with the same family income can face different odds because of what they enrolled in. Ask the university's scholarship office which of its programmes are on the current priority list.
For detail, see our guides to the Tertiary Education Subsidy, how TES, Tulong Dunong and free tuition differ, the DOST scholarship, the CHED Merit Scholarship, and student loans.
The institutional layer
Below are programmes the universities themselves publish. We give the official names and what each is for. We deliberately do not print retention grades or coverage percentages, because those are set per academic year by each office and a stale figure here would send someone into an application they do not qualify for.
Ateneo de Manila University
Ateneo de Manila administers its programmes through the Office of Admission and Aid, and describes them in two families.
Merit and academic scholarships. The Ateneo Freshman Merit Scholarship goes to the strongest applicants, awarded on performance in the Ateneo College Entrance Test together with the applicant's rank and leadership roles in their senior high school. The Director's List Scholarship is awarded to outstanding applicants and carries an annual PHP 100,000 grant applicable to any undergraduate degree.
Financial aid scholarships. These are awarded on financial need together with consistent academic performance, intellectual ability and potential for greater service. Within them, the Magis Scholarship is selected from financial aid applicants in the most financially constrained circumstances and is described by the university as an all-expenses-paid scholarship.
Note the sequencing: merit awards run off the entrance test, financial aid runs off a separate application with documentation. Both close early — Ateneo set the scholarship application deadline for SY 2026-2027 at 19 December 2025.
De La Salle University
DLSU administers scholarships and financial aid through its Admissions and Scholarships Office, and publishes an unusually broad list.
Internally funded scholarships: the St. La Salle Financial Assistance Grant, described as assistance to needy but capable Filipino men and women, open to incoming freshmen and current students; the Archer Achiever Scholarship; the Star Scholars Program; the Vaugirard Scholarship Program; the Gokongwei Grants; the Brother Andrew Gonzalez Academic Scholarship; the Brother President Scholarship Program; the Centennial Scholarship Program; the Scholarship for Children of Faculty; the Scholarship for Children of Co-Academic Personnel; and the Military Scholarship under PD 577.
Financial aid programmes: a Student Loan Program; the START programme, for Student Assistantship and Resource Training; an Athletic Scholarship and tuition discount; a Cultural Arts tuition discount; a Student Publications tuition discount; a Family tuition discount; and a Last Mile Financial Aid Program.
Two of those are worth flagging because families routinely miss them. The Family tuition discount applies to circumstances rather than to achievement, so it is worth asking about even if you expect nothing else. And the Last Mile Financial Aid Program exists for students close to finishing who hit a funding wall, which is a different problem from entry-level aid.
University of Santo Tomas
UST runs its scholarship programme under the Office for Student Affairs in four schemes, each named after a Dominican figure:
| Scheme | Programme | For |
|---|---|---|
| Academic | Santo Tomas Scholarship | Students with excellent academic performance |
| Gifted | Santo Domingo Scholarship | Students who excel in arts, music and sports |
| Equity | San Martin de Porres Scholarship | Deserving students in need of financial assistance |
| Student assistance | San Lorenzo Ruiz Scholarship | Students in need who render 20 to 30 assistantship hours per week |
The Santo Tomas Scholarship runs through qualifying examinations administered for incoming applicants, with the list of qualified applicants submitted to the Office for Student Affairs. UST also processes scholarships funded through its Research and Endowment Foundation separately from the four schemes.
The San Lorenzo Ruiz scheme is the one to note if you were planning to work outside anyway. Twenty to thirty hours a week inside the university, timetabled around your classes, is a very different proposition from an outside job.
Other private universities
Mapúa University, Far Eastern University, Asia Pacific College and most other established private universities run their own entrance, merit and need-based programmes, often with corporate-funded grants attached to specific programmes. We are not listing their programme names and thresholds here, because we could not verify the previous version's list against those universities' published material.
Go to each university's scholarship or admissions office page directly. The checklist below is what to ask once you are there.
How to evaluate any scholarship offer
The name and headline coverage are the least useful parts of an award. These eight questions are what separates a usable scholarship from one you will lose.
1. What exactly does it cover? Tuition only, or tuition and other fees? Miscellaneous and other fees can be a large share of a private university bill, and an award covering "tuition" may leave all of it.
2. What is the retention condition, stated as a number? The exact grade or average, on the university's own scale. "Good academic standing" is not a condition you can plan against.
3. Is there a probation term? Some programmes suspend rather than terminate an award on a bad term. Whether yours does changes how much risk a hard semester carries.
4. Does one failing grade forfeit it? This is a separate question from the average, and the answer is often yes.
5. What load must I carry? Many awards require a full regular load. That rules out the reduced load a working student might otherwise take.
6. Is it re-evaluated on financial need each year? Need-based awards commonly are. A change in household income can end an award mid-degree.
7. Is it tied to a programme? If the award is attached to a specific degree, shifting course may forfeit it. Ask before you shift, not after.
8. Is there a service obligation or employment commitment? Corporate-funded and government science scholarships often carry one. Get its length and terms in writing.
Improving your odds
- Sit the entrance test seriously. At several universities the merit award is decided on entrance test performance, which means the scholarship decision happens before you have submitted anything else.
- Apply for aid and admission on separate tracks. Financial aid usually needs its own application with income documentation, and its deadline is often earlier than the enrolment deadline.
- Get your documents ready before the window opens. Parents' income tax return, certificate of tax exemption, certificate of indigency or equivalent, depending on what the university asks. Assembling these late is the most common reason an application misses a deadline.
- Apply to more than one university. Compare the full packages, not the headline percentages — an award covering tuition and fees at a cheaper school can beat a larger percentage at an expensive one.
- Check whether you are in Listahanan. TES prioritisation runs off it, and knowing your status changes what you should apply for first.
- Ask about the awards nobody advertises. Family discounts, publication and cultural discounts, assistantships and last-mile aid are real programmes that rarely appear in scholarship roundups.
- Take the deadline literally. Scholarship offices do not generally have discretion to extend.
For more, see our guides on how to get a scholarship in the Philippines, CHED scholarship requirements, and scholarships for graduate study.
Sources
- Republic Act No. 10931, Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act — Section 7 on TES, Section 8 on the student loan programme
- CHED-UniFAST — Memorandum Circular No. 01, s. 2026, 2026 Revised TES Guidelines (official PDF) — Sec. 3 prioritisation, Sec. 4 amounts of subsidy
- Ateneo de Manila University, Scholarship and Financial Aid Programs — Freshman Merit, Director's List, Financial Aid and Magis scholarships
- De La Salle University, Scholarships — internally funded scholarships and financial aid programmes
- University of Santo Tomas, Policies and Guidelines of the UST Scholarship Program — the four schemes
- DOST Regional Office VI, DOST Undergraduate Scholarship Programs — RA 7687 and Merit tracks
- DOST Regional Office VII, DOST Undergraduate Scholarships — stipend and tuition benefits
- Republic Act No. 6728, Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education Act — Sections 3, 8 and 9
Browse private universities across the Philippines on SchoolFinderPH and compare programmes in Manila, Makati, Quezon City and Cebu.
