Statements Concerning Institutional Aid
Need-Based Aid
Messiah University offers the Messiah University 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 University 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 University require that the student be enrolled full-time. The only exceptions are:
- The Mature Student Discount (cannot be received in conjunction with the Messiah University Grant)
- The High School Discount
- An exception to the full-time enrollment requirement for seniors who do not need to be enrolled full-time.
Seniors who do not need to be enrolled full-time in one or both of their final two semesters because they have completed most courses needed to finish their degree and simply don't need to be enrolled full-time in order to complete their final degree requirements can receive pro-rated institutional financial aid.
For example, if a second semester senior with a $16,000 Provost's Scholarship ($8,000 per semester) only needs to take 9 credits in that semester in order to complete his final degree requirements, his scholarship amount in that semester would be $6,000, as determined by the following formula:
- 9 (credits enrolled) / 12 (credits necessary to be considered full-time) = .75
- .75 X $8,000 (full-time scholarship amount) = $6,000
This same formula would be applied to all of the student's forms of institutional financial aid.
Eligibility for state and federal forms of financial aid would be determined according to formulas provided by those sources.
Institutional Aid Limited to Eight Semesters: Messiah University 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 University 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.