Statements Concerning Institutional Aid
Need-Based Aid
Messiah College offers the Messiah College Grant. This is a
form of institutional aid that is based on a combination of
demonstrated financial need and academic merit.
Our general policy is that a student will receive the same,
or approximately the same, amount from this fund each year unless the
student’s financial need changes significantly or other forms of aid
become available to the student. The Messiah College Grant is defined as
a form of aid that is to go to students with unmet financial need, and
we wish to distribute this aid in a way that will help the most
students. Consequently, we reserve the right to adjust awards from year
to year, or within a particular academic year, if a student’s
circumstances change. For example, if a student has this form of aid and
then receives a scholarship which causes the total aid to exceed the
financial need, we will adjust the institutional aid to meet the
financial need and redistribute the now uncommitted aid to another needy
student, even if the student’s financial aid package does not contain Federal aid.
Budget constraints prohibit us from making
significant increases to student financial aid packages from year to
year. So, even in cases in which the student’s need increases
significantly, while we will do our best to provide additional
assistance, students should not expect increases in the amount of their
institutional aid. This is a statement of our policy as it has always
been. There is not now and never has been any guarantee that a student
will receive the same amount of institutional need-based aid every year.
In some cases, applicants and their families have
circumstances which affect their ability to pay for the education, but
which are not accounted for in the Federal Methodology or in our normal
processing procedures. In those cases, the institution reserves the
right to award institutional need-based forms of aid using a different
formula than the Federal Methodology or different criteria than that
which we would normally collect and utilize in our awarding decisions.
Other Institutional Aid Issues
Limited to Amount of Tuition: Under no circumstances can the combined amount of the various forms of institutional financial aid that a student receives exceed the amount of the student's tuition.
Full-time Enrollment Required: Almost all
forms of institutional aid offered by Messiah College require that the
student be enrolled full-time. The only exceptions are the Mature
Student Discount and the High School Discount. The Mature Student
Discount cannot be received in conjunction with the Messiah College
Grant.
Scholarship Requirements Must be Met:
Various merit scholarships require that the recipient achieve a G.P.A.
higher than the minimum required under the Satisfactory Academic
Progress policy, or that the student meet other criteria in order to
continue to receive that scholarship. There might be situations in which
the Financial Aid Office will send a Financial Aid Award notice to a
student, listing the scholarship, before it has been determined that
the student has met the other criteria for continuation of the
scholarship. The student must still meet these other criteria and the
fact that the scholarship appeared on the award notice should not be
construed to mean that the student is guaranteed to receive the
scholarship regardless of whether or not the student meets the criteria
for continuation.
Institutional Aid Limited to Eight Semesters:
Messiah College institutional financial aid programs are available for a
maximum of eight semesters and are not available to students who have
already received a bachelors degree from any institution.
Institutional Aid Only for Enrolled Students:
If you receive any form of institutional financial aid, including a
merit scholarship, the aid will be available during semesters you
actually attend Messiah College or one of our off-campus programs which
is approved for use of institutional financial aid. The aid will not be
available for semesters when you are not in attendance. For example, if
you graduate a semester early, you will not receive extra money in your
last semester. In other words, there is no guaranteed aggregate
financial aid amount or number of semesters that you will receive.