Start by submitting the Continue at Loyola Application. The application is specific to Arrupe students and has a priority deadline of December 1st. Letters of recommendation and essays are not required. You will not be asked to submit an official transcript unless you have attended a college outside of Loyola prior to your time of application. After completing your application, be sure to check your email for next steps for how to access your admissions portal, which will include important updates about your next steps.

Merit Awards 

Loyola’s Office for Undergraduate Admissions recognizes students who demonstrated substantial academic merit while at Arrupe. Merit Awards are renewable for students who meet the University’s Scholarship Renewal Policy and are in the approximate range of $12,000–$28,000 annually.

How to apply 

You will automatically be considered for a Merit Award once you are admitted to a bachelor’s program. Unlike the Continuum Scholarship, there is no separate application.

The Arrupe Alumni Scholarship process 

The Arrupe Alumni Scholarships are a bundle of institutional merit wards specific to Arrupe graduates that you can use to supplement your financial aid package from Loyola University.

Timeline 

Students who are eligible for Arrupe Alumni Scholarships will be notified about next steps after they have been admitted to continue at Loyola University. The scholarship application is typically due around the 1st of February each year. Students will be notified in mid-April about the scholarship selection decision. Your LOCUS account will be updated shortly thereafter with an accurate summary of your financial aid award for the upcoming year.

Additional Scholarships Available to Loyola Students 

There are additional scholarships available to Loyola students than can be found via the Loyola Scholarship Connection website. Applications for 2025-2026 will open on Feb. 3rd.  Log in to complete your application by April 15, 2025 for priority consideration.

Eligibility requirements 

There are many scholarships and they have different eligibility requirements depending on your program and major. When you submit your application, you will be considered for all the scholarships for which you are eligible. 

How to apply 

You can apply through the Additional Scholarships Available to Loyola Students. 

This portal opens on March 15. Decisions are sent out in June. 

Note: Most Scholarships are one-time awards. In other words, you should reapply each year, and you may not get the same award that you received last year. 

Seek college advising

Arrupe students that plan to continue at Loyola are offered the opportunity to meet with their new academic advisor during the spring term. Academic advisors will reach out to Arrupe students that have confirmed enrollment with details for how to set up a meeting. It is highly encouraged that students take advantage of this priority advising timeline since the schedules of academic advisors fill up quickly as the academic calendar approaches registration season. Not only is early advising an opportunity to learn more about your college and major, but it also allows you to select and enroll in coursework before other transfer students.

Connect with the Coordinator for Arrupe to Loyola Continuum

Maria Marquez Alvarez, Loyola’s Coordinator for Arrupe to Loyola Continuum, will accompany you in your bachelor's degree program. In collaboration with Arrupe’s College Transfer Coordinator, Jacob Caplan, Maria ensures that all Arrupe alums at Loyola are supported for the duration of their Loyola experience.

Maria hosts programming for students who have been admitted to a Loyola bachelor's degree program in the spring and summer. Be on the lookout for invitations to those events.

You can reach Maria at malvarez12@luc.edu.

Research your Loyola major

You must complete a total of at least 120 credit hours of undergraduate coursework to graduate from Loyola with a bachelor’s degree. Although this may seem like a lot, keep in mind that you earned 61 of those 120 credit hours at Arrupe. You may already be halfway there!

Since you will have already completed your core requirements at Arrupe College, most of your remaining 59+ credit hours of coursework will relate to your major and, if applicable, minor.

• Major: As an undergraduate student, you must choose at least one major focus of study. Typically, majors consist of 30-36 credit hours of coursework (10-12 classes). Keep in mind that this is an average: some majors require significantly more than 36 credit hours (see below).
• Minor: in addition to your major, you may also decide to pursue a minor area of study. To minor in a discipline, students are usually required to complete around 15-18 credit hours of coursework (5-6 classes). A minor may be a good option for you if your major is fewer than 45 credit hours.

You can find information on all of Loyola’s major and minors on the Office for Undergraduate Admission website.

Estimate your time to degree completion

Full-time students take 12-18 credit hours (4-6 classes) per semester. Most Arrupe alums can complete their degree requirements in four semesters (two years).

Students in high credit hour majors may need to extend their time to graduation by a semester or more. Some examples of high credit hour majors include:

• Computer Science: 61-63 credit hours
• Environmental Science: 68-71 credit hours
• Engineering: 84 credit hours
• Neuroscience: 68-75 credit hours

To estimate your major competition time, divide your major’s credit hours requirement (including remaining prerequisites) by 15. This should give you an idea of how many semesters of full-time enrollment it will take to complete your major.

• If your estimated major completion time is fewer than 4 semesters, you should meet with a college advisor to determine if a minor or second major is right for you. Keep in mind that you need to earn at least 120 credit hours to graduate with your bachelor’s degree.
• If your estimated major completion time is 4 semesters or more, you should meet with a collage advisor to map your degree requirements and determine if this timeline is reasonable. If it is not, your advisor should be able to help you identify majors or minors in the field with fewer course requirements.

Note that a longer graduation timeline may have implications for your financial aid award package. If you are pursuing a high credit major (or a major with many prerequisites), we suggest that you reach out to a Loyola financial aid representative to see how your award package might be affected.

Consider Loyola’s other graduation requirements

In addition to your major and minor requirements, you will need to complete additional graduation requirements.

• University requirements - All Loyola University students must complete these requirements in order to earn a bachelor's degree.
• All students must complete an engaged learning requirement (fulfilled by taking a 3-credit hour course).
• All students must complete the University Core, which consists of general education classes. If you graduated from Arrupe, then you have already completed the University Core!
• There are also GPA and credit hour requirements, which you can find in the Undergraduate Studies Catalog.
• College-specific requirements - These will vary based on which school/college you attend.
• For example, some of Loyola's colleges--including the College of Arts and Sciences--require you to take a writing intensive class and complete a foreign language requirement (fulfilled either by earning a grade of a ‘C-’ or higher in a level 102 language course or by passing the language competency exam).
• As another example, Quinlan School of Business requires students to take a set of core business classes.
• To learn about college-specific requirements, first identify which Loyola college you plan to attend (College of Arts & Sciences, Quinlan School of Business, School of Communication, School of Continuing and Professional Studies, School of Education, School of Environmental Sustainability, Parkinson School of Health Sciences and Public Health, Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing, or School of Social Work). Then find your college's website and explore their academic requirements.

Please contact Arrupe’s College Transfer Coordinator, Jacob Caplan.

Application fee waiver

Students who demonstrate financial need may appeal to have their admissions fee waived.

If you would like to be considered for a fee waiver, please complete page one of the Request for Transfer Admission Application Fee Waiver before sending it to Arrupe’s College Transfer Coordinator, Jacob Caplan, at jcaplan@LUC.edu for his review and signature.

Official transcripts

Arrupe will send an official transcript to any college or university free of charge.

To start this process, simply head to your LOCUS Student Homepage, select Academic Records, and then click on Request Official Transcript.

Letters of recommendation

A letter of recommendation is an opportunity for an advisor, instructor, or staff member to attest to your academic and personal strengths.

Who should I ask to write a letter of recommendation?

It is important to request a letter of recommendation from someone who knows you well enough to write you a personalized letter. This person could be

• Your Arrupe academic advisor
• A faculty member who taught you in a class that you did well in
• The moderator of a student group in which you were an active participant

It is standard to request a letter of recommendation about a month before its due date. This will give your recommender time to write a thoughtful letter on your behalf.

What will my recommender need?

Once someone has agreed to write you a letter of recommendation, it’s good practice to follow up with them by email to confirm

• The school or scholarship you are applying for
• How they should submit the letter
• The letter’s due date

You may also want to append a list of your personal accomplishments and goals or attach your resume to this email. This will help your recommender identify things that you think they should highlight in your letter.

Is it appropriate to send my recommender a reminder?

It is a good idea to send your recommender a reminder a week or two before the letter is due. It is also a common courtesy to send your recommender a thank you email once the letter has been submitted.

The personal essay

Admissions officers tend to take the essay component very seriously; it is the one of the few places in the entire application where you can express yourself in your own voice.

Because the essay is about you, the things you write about (and how you write about them) should reflect your uniqueness as an individual. Pick a topic that you are passionate about and write about that topic in your own voice.

You will want to set aside at least a few weeks to write, rewrite, and edit your essay so that what you submit is focused, structured, and free of grammatical and syntactical errors.

Wherever you are in the writing process, the Arrupe Writing Fellows are a resource to you. If not a Writing Fellow, you are encouraged to solicit feedback from someone before submitting your essay.

Students who earn their associates degree from Arrupe College satisfy the general education core requirements at Illinois Articulation Initiative (IAI) receiving institutions.

Transferring to a non-IAI receiving institution

Transferring to a non-IAI college or university does not mean that your Arrupe coursework won’t transfer. However, it does mean that it is up to the receiving institution to decide whether to accept your coursework as satisfying its degree requirements.

Transferology is a free online tool that allows you to see how Arrupe coursework has articulated to non-IAI colleges and universities in the past.

If you plan on transferring to a non-IAI institution, you are strongly encouraged to meet with the Post-Secondary Transitions Coordinator to determine how your Arrupe coursework might transfer and what remaining core requirements you might have.