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THE GALLATIN VALLEY. A PROGRAM ON THE RISE.

Montana State University

Montana State is the state's largest university, a public land-grant school of about 15,100 undergraduates in Bozeman, a fast-growing mountain town in the Gallatin Valley. The ski team practices and races at Bridger Bowl, just north of town, and at Big Sky. The Bobcats have never won a team title, but fourth at the 2026 NCAA Championships matched their best finish and Justine Lamontagne swept the giant slalom and slalom.

Bozeman, MT

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Montana StateBobcats · Ski team

Photo: Tim Evanson, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

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NCAA divisionRMISA · NCAA skiing
D1
UndergraduatesFall 2025 · record
15,142
Acceptance rateFall 2025 · 19,769 of 19,892
99%
Nonresident tuition & fees2026-27 · two semesters · resident $9,441
$34,286
Home hillAlpine practice and race venue
Bridger Bowl
2026 NCAA finishTies program best
4th
Roster athletes2026-27
15
NCAA power rankscore 37.23
#7

Why Montana State?

A mountain town.A team on the way up.

Montana State is the smallest program of the RMISA's big four and the only one without a team title, but 2026 changed the conversation: two individual NCAA titles, a first-ever event win and a coach-of-the-year award.

  • Bridger Bowl ski area in the Bridger Range near Bozeman, the Montana State alpine team's home hill

    Bridger Bowl, 30 minutes

    The alpine team practices and races at Bridger Bowl, about 16 miles from downtown and roughly 30 minutes by road per the ski area, which runs a shuttle from the Strand Union Building on campus; Big Sky is the second venue.(bridgerbowl.com)

  • Lone Peak above the Big Sky Resort base in winter

    Two titles in three days

    Justine Lamontagne won the 2026 NCAA giant slalom and slalom, the first Bobcat and seventh woman ever to win both in one meet, and the team's fourth place matched its best finish.(msubobcats.com)

  • Montana State University campus and agricultural fields with the Bridger Mountains behind

    Easy admission, automatic merit

    MSU admitted 99% of first-year applicants in Fall 2025, requires no test scores, and gives nonresidents automatic Achievement Awards of $7,000 to $16,000 a year by GPA.(montana.edu)

  • Main Street in downtown Bozeman with the Hotel Baxter sign

    Land-grant research

    Montana's largest university and largest research enterprise ($288.7M a year), with 250-plus undergraduate programs including a snow science option in earth sciences.(montana.edu)

About the school

The honest version.

What the school is, what it is known for, and what a family should weigh before committing.

Montana State is Montana's largest university, a public land-grant school with about 15,100 undergraduates in Bozeman, a fast-growing mountain town in the Gallatin Valley. It is a research university with a practical bent: engineering, agriculture, nursing, business and the sciences are its strengths, and it is the Northwest's top producer of Goldwater scholars. Campus life is outdoors-first, with two ski areas close by and Yellowstone within a day trip. The ski team trains and races at Bridger Bowl, just north of town, and at Big Sky, with nordic training around Bozeman and races at Crosscut and West Yellowstone. The program is on the rise: fourth at the 2026 NCAA Championships, matching its best finish ever, with Justine Lamontagne winning both the giant slalom and the slalom. Skiing competes in the RMISA; other sports are in the Big Sky Conference. Admission is straightforward, test scores are not required, and nonresident merit awards are automatic by GPA, but Bozeman rents are steep and the program has never won a team title against the three powers it races every weekend.

Know before you commit

  • Bozeman housing is expensive for a college town: local market reports put one-bedroom rents at roughly $1,700-$2,200 a month in 2026, with rents up more than 30% since 2020 and vacancy often under 3%, so off-campus living can rival tuition for nonresidents.(platinumbozeman.com)
  • The ski program is the smallest of the four and has never won an NCAA team title; fourth place in 2026 was its best finish ever, so depth and resources trail Utah, Colorado and Denver, and most RMISA weekends mean long road trips to Utah and Colorado.(bozemandailychronicle.com)

Feel the campus

From first tracks to final exams.

Credited archive photographs of the campus, the town and the hill; not current team photography.

5 of 5 photos shown

Ski team experience

Fourth in the nation.First in Bozeman.

Montana State skis in the RMISA with Kris Shampeny as head alpine coach (2026 ISCA Alpine Coach of the Year), Roger Bay as assistant and Adam St. Pierre leading nordic; there is no director of skiing. The 2026-27 rosters list 15 alpine skiers (eight women, seven men) and 14 nordic athletes. Alpine trains and races at Bridger Bowl and Big Sky; nordic hosts races at Crosscut and West Yellowstone.

View official roster
Team athletes
15
Men / women
6 / 7
International athletes
7
NCAA team titles
0
Conference
RMISA
Alpine disciplines
SL + GS

Where Nolan fits today

Not a selection or admission prediction.

  • SLDevelopment
    76.05 · 7th of 7

    Scoring line 38.44: 37.61 points to drop.

  • GSScorer
    33.44 · 1st of 7

    Scoring line 41.71.

  • SGScorer
    46.06 · 2nd of 7

    Scoring line 75.00.

  • DHDevelopment
    405.21 · 7th of 7

    Scoring line 161.78: 243.43 points to drop.

What it takes to reach the scoring line

SLtarget 38.44 · counts best 3

No results this season yet. 3 results averaging 38.44 would get there.

  • World Cup (min penalty 0): finish within 5.27% of the winner
  • NorAm / Europa Cup (min penalty 15): finish within 3.21% of the winner
  • National Championships (min penalty 20): finish within 2.53% of the winner
  • FIS / University / Junior (min penalty 23): finish within 2.12% of the winner
DHtarget 161.78 · counts best 2

No results this season yet. 2 results averaging 161.78 would get there.

  • World Cup (min penalty 0): finish within 12.94% of the winner
  • NorAm / Europa Cup (min penalty 15): finish within 11.74% of the winner
  • National Championships (min penalty 20): finish within 11.34% of the winner
  • FIS / University / Junior (min penalty 23): finish within 11.1% of the winner
  • Citizen (min penalty 40): finish within 9.74% of the winner
  • Entry League (min penalty 60): finish within 8.14% of the winner

Percentages use this list’s F-values.

Clear · Back to Nolan's profile

Academics

What you can study.

MSU runs a semester calendar: spring 2027 classes begin January 12 and spring break is March 15-19, so the RMISA season and NCAA Championships fall inside spring semester. The university reports an 18:1 student-faculty ratio, a record 81.8% first-year retention rate and a 59.2% six-year graduation rate for the 2019 cohort.

  • 15,142
    Undergraduates
  • 4th
    2026 NCAA finish
  • 18:1
    Student-faculty ratio

7 featured fields · full catalog

  • Mechanical EngineeringEngineering
    A BS in the Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering with lab sequences to plan around race travel.
  • Computer ScienceQuantitative
    Offered through the Gianforte School of Computing.
  • NursingHealth
    A BSN through the Mark and Robyn Jones College of Nursing; clinical placements are scheduled, not flexible.
  • FinanceBusiness
    A BS in Business with a finance option in the Jake Jabs College of Business.
  • KinesiologyHealth
    A BS in Kinesiology with an exercise science focus.
  • Environmental SciencesEnvironment
    A BS in Environmental Sciences in the College of Agriculture.
  • Earth Sciences, Snow ScienceScience
    A snow science emphasis in the BS in Earth Sciences, using the surrounding Rockies as its field laboratory.
Explore majors

Source: montana.edu

Admissions

Your path here.

Testing
test-optional(montana.edu)
Application deadline
Rolling admission; September 15 priority date, with decisions within about two weeks of a complete application(montana.edu)
  1. Submit the online application with a self-reported cumulative GPA.
  2. Pay the $38 online application fee (not waivable).
  3. Have your high school send an official transcript after graduation.
  4. Submit ACT or SAT scores only if you have them; they are used for math and writing placement, not admission.
Admissions details

Test scores

What admitted students scored.

Test-optional · enrolled submitters, Fall 2025

  • SAT total1070 – 1290
  • ACT composite21 – 27

Middle 50%: a quarter scored below the low figure and a quarter above the high one. Source: montana.edu

Acceptance rate

How selective it is.

99%Fall 2025 (19,769 admitted of 19,892)
  • Admitted
  • Not admitted

Admission is close to automatic for students who meet the standard (a 2.5 GPA, an ACT of 22, an SAT of 1120, or upper-half class rank, plus a college-preparatory curriculum), so the real deadlines are the scholarship ones. Being recruited changes nothing about the academic requirement.

Source: montana.edu

Cost & financial aid

What a year costs.

2026-27 published figures.

Published costs
Tuition & fees (resident, two semesters)$9,441
Tuition & fees (nonresident, two semesters)$34,286

Tuition and fee figures are the published Fall 2026/Spring 2027 per-semester charges for 12 or more credits, doubled, and exclude health insurance and program fees. MSU publishes on-campus housing and food, books and personal-expense budgets as a chart on its cost-of-attendance page. Nonresident Achievement Awards are automatic by GPA ($7,000 to $16,000 a year for four years); limited WUE awards at 1.5 times resident tuition are available to eligible western-state students with a 3.0 GPA and do not stack. Athletic aid is allowed under the 16-athlete Division I skiing roster limit.(montana.edu)

Financial aid information

Location

Campus, hill, airport.

Montana State University campus

The campus sits on the south side of Bozeman in the Gallatin Valley, with the Bridger Range to the north.

Open in Maps · source

Main Street in downtown Bozeman with the Hotel Baxter sign
Main Street, downtown Bozeman, with the Baxter Hotel sign (2013)

Student life

Beyond the hill.

  • First year in the halls

    New students with fewer than 30 credit hours are required to live in university residence halls; after that, most students move to a Bozeman rental market that is expensive for a college town.(montana.edu)

  • Outdoor Recreation

    Campus Recreation runs student-led trips, clinics and courses, from avalanche safety to backcountry skiing, plus a bike and ski shop and gear rentals at student prices.(montana.edu)

  • Cat-Griz and athlete support

    The Montana rivalry, played since 1897 and known as the Brawl of the Wild, anchors the fall; athletics assigns an academic-success staff member to the alpine and nordic ski programs.(montana.edu)

Athlete voices

Real stories.

  • “In my opinion if she's not the best she's one of the best skiers we've ever had at MSU. I think she flourished in this program.”
    Kris Shampeny, head alpine coach · source
  • “I couldn't be more grateful to have done it with Kris as my coach, and I'm so glad I committed and skied here at Montana State.”
    Justine Lamontagne, alpine skier · source
  • “Being on the mountain, going to Bridger Bowl on a powder day is so fun. Being outside, being in the mountains, kept me in it.”
    Justine Lamontagne, alpine skier · source

Alumni & outcomes

What came next.

Individual NCAA titles in 2026 (first Bobcat to win two in one meet)(msubobcats.com)
2
Best NCAA team finish, matched in 2026(msubobcats.com)
4th
First-year retention, record (Fall 2024 cohort)(montana.edu)
81.8%
University six-year graduation rate (2019 cohort)(montana.edu)
59.2%

Related programs

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Sources, rights and updates

Where this comes from.

Every figure carries its reporting period and a link. Rosters and points come from official rosters and FIS or USCSA results. Photographs are Wikimedia Commons archive images under open licences, credited on each image.

40 source pages across 8 sites

Your future in skiing starts here

Ready to learn more about Montana State?

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