The Yellow Ribbon Program of the Post 9/11 GI Bill

The Yellow Ribbon Program takes the already super-generous Post 9/11 GI Bill program and super-charges it. These two programs together help military and veteran families afford very expensive college educations at little or no cost to the family. So what is the Yellow Ribbon Program, and how does it work?

Note: In this post, I’ll use the phrase GI Bill to refer to the Post 9/11 GI Bill. It’s shorter, and that’s what this post is about. The Montgomery GI Bill an entirely different program.

The Yellow Ribbon Program is a Sidecar to the Post 9/11 GI Bill

The most important thing to know is that the YR program only works when you are actively using Post 9/11 GI Bill benefits. Much like a sidecar that only runs alongside a motorcycle, you can’t use the YR program alone.

This is one of the most common misconceptions I hear about the YR program. Folks think that you use YR benefits after you run out of GI Bill benefits, or that you can pick and choose which semesters you want to turn on or turn off the YR program.

From a planning perspective, this is vital info. When you’re using the GI Bill, with or without Yellow Ribbon benefits, you are “spending” GI Bill benefits. You can’t use YR without using the GI Bill.

GI Bill Basics

In order to understand the YR program, you have to have a basic understanding of the Post 9/11 GI Bill.

The Post 9/11 GI Bill is an educational benefit offered by the Department of Veterans Affairs. In some situations, those benefits can be transferred from the service member to an eligible spouse and/or child(ren.) Benefits include tuition, monthly housing allowance, books, & more.

Post 9/11 GI Bill benefits are earned based on days of qualifying service. Qualifying service is counted a little differently for active duty and reserve component members. Active duty folks generally get to count each day of service.

Only some reserve days count towards GI Bill eligibility. Every situation is different, and reservists and National Guard should clarify how many qualifying days they have. As a guideline, these days typically count:

• Title 10 active duty supporting named contingency operations
• Title 32 service for the purpose of administering or training the National Guard
• Title 32 service under section 502(f) for national emergency response
• Title 10 service under 12301(h) for service-related medical care
• Specific orders for major emergencies or missions supporting combatant commands

Based on eligible days of service, here’s how the GI Bill benefits are earned:

The Post 9/11 GI Bill benefits include tuition payments, monthly housing allowance, books allowance, and a few other benefits. The Yellow Ribbon Program is an add-on to the tuition portion only – it does not impact any other benefits. So we’re only going to talk about tuition in this article.

GI Bill Tuition Payments

The Post 9/11 GI Bill pays tuition up to an annual cap. For 100% eligibility, this cap is:

• In-state tuition at a public school
• $27,120.05 per year for private or foreign school (2023-2024 school year)
• $28,937.09 per year for private or foreign school (2024-2025 school year)

GI Bill Tuition Example

You can find out how much the GI Bill will pay at each school at the GI Bill® Comparison Tool website. You can look at schools individually or compare them side by side.

For example, here is a comparison between Bethune-Cookman University  in Daytona Beach and Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. This snip uses 2023-2024 school year numbers. We can learn a lot from the parts of this comparison chart.

First, we can see that the GI Bill only pays up to the amount of tuition and allowed fees. Bethune-Cookman’s tuition is less than the private school cap, and that’s how much the GI Bill pays. It won’t pay higher than the amount of tuition and fees or the cap.

We can also see that there is a big gap left over at some schools.

It’s important to note that the information on the VA website may be outdated, and is not binding. You need to verify everything you see there. But it is a good starting point.

Displacement

The next thing to understand is how other forms of financial assistance can impact how much the GI Bill pays. The GI Bill is always the last payer of tuition. So if you have other forms of financial assistance that are applied to tuition, that will only reduce how much the GI Bill pays. If the money can’t be applied to other costs, then it won’t help you pay for room and board or books or anything else.

For example, let’s say you go to Bethune-Cookman, and you get a $2,000 scholarship from an outside organization that specifies that the scholarship can only be used for tuition. The GI Bill will only pay $12,794 instead of $14,794. 

The same thing happens with institutional aid or any other form of tuition-only aid. If your school gives you a $5,000 tuition grant, it will reduce the amount that the GI Bill pays.

Now, you may receive aid that can be put towards room, board, books, or even other expenses. If that’s true, and your school will apply the payments that way, you can get the full amount of the GI Bill tuition payment and have the other money go towards other expenses.

You should absolutely ask how your school will apply your payments so that you understand what’s happening. This a lot of money and you can’t make good decisions without the right information.

The Yellow Ribbon Program

In our Rollins College example, there is a balance left on the tuition portion of the school bill after the GI Bill has made its tuition payment. That’s when the Yellow Ribbon program may come into play.

Yellow Ribbon Eligibility

The Yellow Ribbon program is available to veterans who have 100% eligibility (as described above) for the Post 9/11 GI Bill. It is also available to eligible dependents using transferred benefits, as long as the veteran has 100% eligibility. There is no Yellow Ribbon benefit if the veteran has less than 100% GI Bill eligibility. 

How Does The Yellow Ribbon Program Work?

Schools that choose to participate in the Yellow Ribbon program agree to make a contribution toward the GI Bill student’s remaining tuition and fees. The school decides how many Yellow Ribbon “slots” they will offer, and how much funding they will give.

Then, when the bill comes, the school contributes the designated amount. The VA matches that amount.

The two payments may cover all of the remaining tuition and fees, or some of it.

School Participation Rates

Every school chooses how many slots they will offer and how much they will contribute towards each student. They can have participation rate for the whole school or different rates for different programs. You can look up each school’s participate rate at the VA’s Find A Yellow Ribbon School webpage.

For example, Pitzer College offers 10 slots per year and the combined Yellow Ribbon payments from Pitzer and the VA cover all the remaining tuition and fees.

In contrast, New York University offers undergraduate students $10,000 but offers it to all eligible students. Keep in mind that the VA will also pitch in $10,000, or up to the full cost of tuition and fees. (As a former NYU parents, it’s $10,000. That school is expensive.)

Some schools have different offerings based on which program or education level you are in. For example, NYU three pages of results in the Yellow Ribbon lookup page. It is very important to verify the Yellow Ribbon participation level of your exact program with both the VA and the school.

What The Yellow Ribbon Program Pays

The Yellow Ribbon Program pays some or all of the shortfall between the tuition and fees amount and the GI Bill tuition payment.

Let’s look at a hypothetical school with tuition and fees of $47,120 per year. If the GI Bill pays $27,120, then there’s $20,000 left to be paid. That’s money that might be covered by the Yellow Ribbon Program.

Now, let’s say that this an unlimited-unlimited Yellow Ribbon school, meaning they will pay up to the total cost of tuition and fees for all eligible students. In that case, this payment would look like this:

Next, let’s see what it looks like when the school participates at a limited level:

As you can see, the Yellow Ribbon program doesn’t always pay 100% of the cost of tuition and fees. It is essential that you talk to your specific school(s) to know exactly what financial responsibilities you will have for tuition and fees.

Applying for Yellow Ribbon Benefits

Yellow Ribbon benefits are administered through your college or university – not through the VA. However, because Yellow Ribbon goes hand-in-hand with the GI Bill, there is part of the process where you work with the VA.

1. 1. Apply for Post 9/11 GI Bill benefits through VA. Full instructions for receiving your Certificate of Eligibility are found in this blog post.
   2. Submit COE to school. Use whatever process the school wants you to use. That might be sending it attached to an email or submitting it to a portal.
   3. Complete the school’s Yellow Ribbon application process. When this needs to be done will also depend on the school’s processes. Talk to your School Certifying Official to learn what they want and when.

Limited Yellow Ribbon Slots

As we discussed above, not every school offers an unlimited number of Yellow Ribbon slots. If you are considering a school with limited Yellow Ribbon slots, you need to figure out whether you’re likely to receive one. You can ask the school how competitive these slots are. You can also compare the number of Yellow Ribbon slots listed on the Find a Yellow Ribbon School webpage with the number of students listed on the GI Bill Comparison Tool listing.

It is important to know that schools must assign Yellow Ribbon slots on a first come, first serve basis. However, it does appear that at most schools, once you have a Yellow Ribbon slot, you can keep it from year to year. Therefore, the key point is that you need to apply for a Yellow Ribbon slot as early as possible in the application process. You also need to know whether your school will require you to reapply each year.

Using Yellow Ribbon Benefits

Even though you’ve been approved for a Yellow Ribbon slot, you will still receive a bill for tuition and fees. The school will typically put a hold on your bill reflecting the fact that you are expecting VA education benefits.

Then, the school will certify your attendance with the VA. This can happen at any point during the first few weeks of school, but the most common timeline is for certifications to be submitted immediately after the end of the drop/add period. At some point after receiving certification from the school, the VA will pay the school for the GI Bill portion of tuition and fees and also the Yellow Ribbon portion of tuition and fees.

At some point between the original bill and the application of VA benefits, the school will also apply its portion of the Yellow Ribbon program to the bill. Whether you have remaining tuition and fees after the application of all payments will depend the school’s level of participation in the Yellow Ribbon program.

Planning Challenges

While Yellow Ribbon is an amazing program, there are things to be aware of. First is displacement, as explained above. The second is limited slots, also discussed above. The last potential problem is that, hypothetically, schools do not have to continue to participate in the Yellow Ribbon program from year to year. Hypothetically, you could start at a school offering Yellow Ribbon benefits and they could stop participating while you are still in school. I have not seen that happen, but it could. Just put that in your pocket.

Another thing that can present a planning challenge is that the VA’s databases aren’t always up-to-date. They are only updated annually and they rely on the school to send them any changes. If the school doesn’t reply or the reply is late, the database may be wrong.

The Yellow Ribbon program is a tremendous addition to the Post 9/11 GI Bill. It’s also tremendously misunderstood. If you don’t know how it works, you can’t guarantee that you can use it as part of your overall Post 9/11 GI Bill strategy. Getting smart about the Yellow Ribbon program can ensure that you can make it work for you!

Other posts about paying for college:

Post 9/11 GI Bill Basics

Seven Answers To FAFSA Questions For Military Families

The Big List of Military Scholarships for Service Members, Veterans, Spouses and Kids

College Shopping? Be Sure To Do All The Math

Legal Documents for Young Adults: What You Need To Have

How To Get A GI Bill Certificate of Eligibility