Eliminated 8/23, on food. Free courts on your own campus, at $40,800 a year. Kept as the record of why it lost, not a recommendation.
| Sticker (tuition, fees, room, board) | $65,314 |
|---|---|
| Automatic merit at 4.0 / 1470 | ~$24,500 President's Estimated |
| Need-based aid at $300k | $0 |
| Net per year | ~$40,800 |
| Four years | ~$163k |
Biola publishes five scholarship tiers ($14,500 / $19,500 / $22,500 / $23,500 / $24,500), awarded automatically at admission on unweighted GPA and test scores with no separate application. They do not publish the GPA and SAT cutoffs for each tier, so top-tier placement is an inference rather than a confirmed grid hit.
It is a well-supported inference: their average admit has a 3.54 GPA and the middle 50 percent SAT is 1160 to 1360, both far below you. Deadline to submit updated GPA and scores is May 1. President's renews annually at a 3.2 GPA.
What this covers: tuition, mandatory fees, housing and the meal plan. It does not cover books, transportation or personal spending, which add roughly $5,000 to $8,000 a year. Full breakdown.
Cooper, 8/23, verbatim: "i'm not getting the full ride to biola.. and it's expensive bro." The Trustee chase is dropped. Biola is a $40,800/yr school on the automatic President's tier, full stop. The reasoning below stays on the page in case that changes, but nothing here is an active step.
The Trustee Scholarship is full tuition, roughly 10 awarded, on a separate application due mid-January (January 15 in the current cycle, confirm for fall 2027 entry). Judged on academic excellence, character, community involvement and Christian maturity. It has a published floor this site found this week: a minimum SAT of 1500, ACT of 34, or CLT of 110, plus a 3.8 unweighted GPA. Confirmed, biola.edu/trustee-scholarship A 1470 does not clear the score bar, by 30 points.
It replaces your President's award, it does not stack on top of it. Biola's catalog says the Trustee award "will replace the student's normal academic scholarship and Biola University Award eligibility." So the honest math, if the score ever clears, would be:
Biola Tennis Center: 8 lighted courts on campus. Recently renovated with LED lighting and HD video cameras, plus a clubhouse. Access is free with a valid Biola ID. Eight courts on your own campus at zero cost is genuinely excellent, and for a long time this site called it the best tennis asset on the list.
Against the original three schools Biola won tennis outright. Against six it is third on the competitive-team measure. Nothing about Biola got worse. The comparison got wider, and it exposed a distinction the old list could not make: Biola sells you access, not competition.
Pepperdine has a USTA Tennis on Campus club that plays UCLA and USC. Baylor has eighteen courts including the only indoor ones anywhere here. Biola has neither a team nor as many courts. What it has is eight of them, free, thirty seconds from your dorm, which is a real and underrated thing if you are hitting rather than competing.
You told the site you're open to competing or to just playing. Eight free lighted courts on campus were third of six when the bar was competing. When the bar is playing, courts fifty yards from your dorm are the best answer on the list. Access rescores as a win. The money case now stands on its own at $40,800/yr, without a Trustee chase behind it.
D2 at UTR 6.7 is a real stretch. NCSA's public recruiting guidelines put mid-to-lower D3 programs around UTR 6+ and NAIA around 11.5+; other sources put typical D3 men at 7.0–10.0. Sources disagree on exactly where the D3 floor sits, but agree on the shape: at 6.7 you sit at or below the bottom of the range, not comfortably inside it. Recruiting-service guideline, not roster data
Three things this is not: it is not Biola's actual roster, coaches weigh fit and academics alongside rating, and a 17-year-old's rating can still move. Biola's actual roster UTR levels remain unverified. Unverified The supportable claim is only that the published bands do not support assuming a spot, not that one is closed. Court access is guaranteed either way.
Context, not a warning, as of 8/22. These bands mattered when varsity was the plan. You're open to either, so they now describe a path you haven't chosen rather than one you're counting on.
There is no ultimate frisbee club at Biola. The club sports roster is men's and women's lacrosse, volleyball, surf club and esports. Recreational clubs cover archery, spikeball and swing dancing.
Ultimate exists as an intramural only. Intramurals are described as an easy, low-friction way to get involved (grab friends from your hall, form a team, play a relaxed social league), but there is no competitive team and no travel.
You said ultimate is a for-fun club thing. Intramural pickup covers that fine, so having no club barely costs Biola anything now. It would only matter if you wanted to play ultimate competitively, and you do not.
USA Ultimate registration, college series division (D-I or D-III), and conference and region placement could not be verified for any school on this site from public sources. Unverified USAU college series rosters are not readily searchable and none of the schools publishes it. All ultimate competitiveness language on this site is descriptive, taken from school and club sources.
Dining is run by Bon App茅tit Management Company, and this needs saying clearly because the earlier version of this page implied otherwise: Bon App茅tit has the strongest published sourcing standards of any operator on this site. Farm to Fork requires at least 20 percent of ingredients from small owner-operated farms within 150 miles, no routine antibiotics in chicken, turkey or hamburger since 2003, and cage-free eggs since 2005. Better than Baylor's Chartwells, better than Point Loma's Sodexo.
So Biola is not last on food because the food is badly sourced. It is last because those standards apparently are not reaching the plate, and because you are locked onto this meal plan longer here than anywhere else. Good sourcing you cannot taste and cannot escape is worse than mediocre sourcing you can opt out of. All six kitchens compared.
Caf茅 Biola is an all-you-can-eat buffet: three entrees, a large salad bar, a deli with specialty salads and meats, two beverage bars, soups, desserts, soft-serve and hard ice cream, plus pizza, pasta and stir-fry stations. Menu items carry icons for gluten-free, vegetarian and vegan, there is a gluten-free food bar and made-to-order prep stations, and Bon App茅tit's site has an allergen filter tool.
From The Chimes:
Produce freshness complaints are the most directly damaging thing here, because a whole-foods eater lives off the salad bar and the fresh stations.
The Special Diet Accommodation program is probably not a way out. Biola will have the culinary team prepare meals at no extra cost, but it requires approval from the Office of Student Accessibility, medical documentation, and a personal consultation. A strong dietary preference is not a medical condition, so you most likely would not qualify. Worth asking directly rather than assuming.
Compounding factor, and it is the deciding one: the under-21 residency rule below means you would be locked onto this meal plan for roughly three years, the longest lock-in of any school on this site. Pepperdine forces two years, Point Loma three, Cal Baptist lets you drop to 35 swipes a semester, Baylor releases you after one year.
Off campus: Sprouts Farmers Market in La Mirada, nearest Whole Foods in Brea, and Trader Joe's locations serve the area. Groceries are solvable if you have a car and somewhere to cook.
Freshman halls are Alpha, Sigma, Horton and Stewart: traditional style with twin beds, desks, closets and community bathrooms on each floor. The most basic housing of any school researched here.
Residency requirement: students under 21 as of the first day of fall classes must live in university housing for the entire academic year. This is age-based rather than class-year based, so for you it covers roughly your first three-plus years. The only meaningful exemption is commuting from a parent's home, which does not apply.
Biola's official guidance says air conditioning is provided in rooms, but some older halls have historically lacked it and sources conflict. Unverified
Also unverified: whether residence halls have kitchen access for students who want to cook their own food. Given the dining complaints, that is a materially important question here.
Early Action closes November 30. Full timeline and the ordered do-this-next list live on the apply page.
The transcript blocker is fixed. Biola requires a letter grade for every subject from 9th grade on; the junior-year gap that sat here is resolved, per Cooper directly: "my transcript is fine, urs is outdated."
The Trustee Scholarship, full tuition, is a separate mid-January application with a 1500 SAT / 34 ACT / 110 CLT floor a 1470 does not clear. Cooper has dropped this chase as of 8/23. Left here as reference, not a to-do: it replaces the President's award rather than stacking on it, so the real gain if ever pursued is about $28,400 a year, not the full $53,000 sticker of the tuition it covers.
Cooper ruled Biola out on food. Free courts thirty seconds from the dorm, a coach coming off PacWest Coach of the Year, and the Trustee math never got the chance to be the deciding factor, because the meal-plan lock-in and produce complaints below decided it first. This page stays up as the record of why, not as a live option.
What was actually in Biola's favor: eight free courts on campus, a real automatic tier at $40,800/yr on a 4.0/1470, and a Trustee Scholarship path (kept as background above) that would have made it far and away the cheapest school here, had the SAT retake happened.
What sank it: the longest meal-plan lock-in on the site, roughly three years, at the school with the most produce complaints on this list, plus the most basic dorms. Tennis access was good but not decisive either way, since Biola never offered a competitive team.