How It Works

At Messiah, almost all financial aid packages include a combination of scholarships and grants (which you don’t have to repay), loans (which you do have to repay), and student employment.

We use the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) as an objective tool to calculate whether your family’s resources fall short of what is needed, and, if so, by how much. The FAFSA is a confidential statement of income and assets from both you and your parents. The information is analyzed to compare your financial capacity to that of other students in such areas as income, assets, size of family, number of family members in post-secondary education, and age of the parents.

The goal is to design financial aid that is as equitable as possible for each student and their family. We then use those calculations to put together a proposed combination (or “package” in financial aid language) of scholarships, grants, loans and employment.