EMU’s financial aid notification packet has a new look, and people are starting to notice.

The packet of information, mailed to every admitted undergraduate student with a FAFSA on file at EMU, simplifies the often complicated financial aid process by outlining the total aid offered and the costs students will be expected to cover. It includes information on grants, scholarships, and loans, as well as direct and indirect costs of an education at EMU.

Once a drab bundle of letters and forms, the financial aid notification packet has been delightfully redesigned through a collaboration between EMU’s marketing and communications department and Farmville, Virginia-based marketing agency .

The new-and-improved “FAN packet” features the design of a sunrise over the familiar Massanutten Mountain ridgeline and bright, attention-grabbing colors. It also uses friendly, approachable typefaces with bold, easy-to-read text. Each packet comes with a set of EMU-branded stickers, perfect for laptops, phone cases, water bottles, and notebooks.

It’s anything but ordinary, reflecting EMU’s unique and diverse campus, its commitment to providing a transformative and accessible education, and the care it puts into supporting students and families through the financial aid process.

“This project was all about transparency, organization, and user-focused design: helping students and families navigate an important decision with confidence,” reads a Facebook post from Letterpress Communications.

EMU’s marketing and communications department teamed up with Farmville-based Letterpress Communications to design its reimagined financial aid notification packet.

Best of Show

Representatives from the marketing agency attended the Southwest Virginia American Advertising Awards in Abingdon, Virginia, on Feb. 28. There, EMU’s FAN packet won a Gold ADDY, a top honor in the advertising industry, as well as the Best of Show award, recognizing it as the best overall piece in the competition.

It will now compete at the district level against Gold ADDY winners from Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. If the FAN packet wins gold at the district level (winners are announced in April), it will advance to the national competition in June.

“This is truly terrific news,” said Braydon Hoover ’11, MAOL ’21, vice president of enrollment and marketing. “For the nearly 1,000 students and families who have already received the FAN packet, this award demonstrates just how special the financial aid process is here at EMU.”

“We are committed to doing everything we can to make the financial aid process as simple and understandable as possible,” said Troy Martin, director of financial aid for EMU. “The next step, if you’ve received a FAN packet and haven’t done so already, is to review it with your family and your admissions counselor.”

For more information about your financial aid notification, visit .

Note (October 2025): The adjusted gross family income threshold for eligibility to receive the Promise Grant has increased to below $75,000.

With just about everything rising in price these days, EMU is ensuring that a quality college education is within reach of more students than ever before, thanks to its new Promise Grant initiative. 

The EMU Promise Grant, which takes effect during the fall 2024 semester, fully covers the tuition costs for Virginia residents whose adjusted gross family incomes are under $65,000. It is for first-time, full-time undergraduate students. For more details about EMU Promise Grant eligibility, and a sample of frequently asked questions, visit emu.edu/promise-grant. 

Mary Jensen, vice president of enrollment and strategic growth, first unveiled the EMU Promise Grant to the public at Saturday’s Admitted Student Day. She said the new initiative is one way EMU is embodying its vision of opening new pathways of access and achievement, a vision outlined in the university’s 2023-2028 strategic plan, Pathways of Promise: Preparing Tomorrow’s Unifying Leaders.

“It’s part of our recognition of the rising costs that are real,” she said. “We want to make sure the most vulnerable, the most marginalized, those who have the least access, aren’t as impacted by the fact that everything costs more.”

Not only does the EMU Promise Grant create access to education, but it also shows college-bound students that an EMU education is more affordable than they may have thought. After all, the average net cost for an EMU student in 2022-2023 was just $15,309.  

“A lot of students assume a private college is not affordable, so they don’t consider it… they don’t even entertain the possibility,” Jensen said. “We hope this grant will encourage people to consider a private college and put EMU on their list of possibilities.”

In comparison to schools that offer a similar type of promise grant, EMU’s is among the most generous and with the fewest restrictions. EMU’s income threshold for promise grant eligibility is significantly higher, and more accepting, than comparable ODAC member schools. Other schools require that promise grant students pay room and board costs to live on campus. Under the EMU Promise Grant, students can choose to live at home within 30 miles of the Harrisonburg, Virginia, campus and still receive the award. And, there is no minimum high school GPA requirement to receive the EMU Promise Grant, unlike some other schools’ programs.

One of the best parts about the EMU Promise Grant is that students don’t even need to apply for it. If they qualify, they will automatically receive their tuition paid for (after state, federal, and institutional grants or scholarships have been awarded).

February coincides with Financial Aid Awareness Month, a time when many in the higher education community provide crucial information to students and families about access to federal, state and institutional aid. Now that the word is officially out about the EMU Promise Grant, Jensen said undergraduate admissions counselors are eager to let students know about the new program.

“They’re very excited to tell students they’re working with, ‘If your family is eligible for this grant, we have some really good news for you,’” she said.

Concern over college affordability in the United States is nothing new. The inflation-adjusted average annual cost of tuition, room and board for the country’s colleges and universities has more than doubled over the past 30 years, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

While the cost of attendance has actually been increasing faster at public universities over the past decade, private institutions are in general still more expensive. The National Center for Education Statistics puts the average annual cost of tuition, room and board at private, not-for-profit American universities at $36,300 for the 2010-2011 academic year.

While the -affiliated colleges and universities aren’t quite that pricey, they’re not cheap either. According to online “sticker price” figures, the average full cost of attendance this year at the five colleges/universities is $33,714. (The full cost of a 90-credit hour M.Div. degree from the two Mennonite Church USA-affiliated seminaries is currently just over $41,000.)

Price or best fit?

“Higher education as a whole has had to defend its worth and value in today’s society,” says , director of retention at ��ݮ���� (EMU), Harrisonburg, Va. “We see more and more students making their choice based on price instead of what’s a best fit for them.”

When it comes to paying for an education, however, officials at Mennonite educational institutions note that scholarships and financial aid almost always mean that the actual cost of a student’s education will be less than the sticker price.

Dan Koop Liechty, director of admissions at , notes that cost and affordability decisions are best made after prospective students have applied, been admitted and received financial assistance packages. At this point, students can make decisions based on the bottom-line cost of their educations, which are often much more comparable to attending a public institution than it first appears.

Directly related to the price of higher education is the issue of student debt, which has also been increasing. According to the , 2011 graduates who borrowed to finance their educations finished with an average debt load of $26,600. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, some consider this an unreasonable burden to place on graduates entering an uncertain job market. Others characterize it as a reasonable investment—about the cost of a new Toyota Prius—that sets college graduates on the path to a much larger payoff.

College degree as an investment

“It’s not debt that you’re using to buy consumables and putting on a credit card with a 21-percent interest rate,” says Ron Headings, vice president for enrollment management and marketing at . “It’s buying you a college degree.”

Headings adds that with prior planning and hard work during college—to maintain academic scholarships as well as earn income—students and their families can find it “fairly easy to get out of Bluffton University debt-free.”

Cost and debt aside, getting a college degree clearly remains a smart financial investment for young adults. While estimates vary, many sources now place the average increase in earnings over a 40-year career at or near $1 million compared to workers without a college degree.

Furthermore, faculty, staff and alumni of the five colleges and universities say a degree from one isn’t just any garden-variety bachelor’s degree.

Engaged profs, small classes

“At a larger school, many of the foundational classes are taught by teaching assistants,” says Matthew Schmidt, a 1994 graduate of , North Newton, Kan. “At Bethel you have full professors teaching these same classes.”

Schmidt, who lives in Newton, Kan., and is interim director of a clinic providing health services to medically underserved populations, says the small class sizes at Bethel created an interactive environment ideal for collaborative learning.

Additionally, engaged faculty invested in students’ well-being and emphases on critical thinking and cross-cultural skills prepare them particularly well for the future.

Strong outcomes

Two of many indications are these:

• From 2006 to 2010, 91 percent of EMU graduates who applied to medical school were accepted, almost double the national acceptance rate of 46 percent.

• At Bethel, 95 percent of social work graduates pass their licensing exams on the first attempt, compared with a national pass rate of 78 percent.

“In a rapidly changing and highly specialized job market, a liberal arts college degree provides an essential foundation for the basic skills that are needed in a dynamic economic environment,” says John D. Roth, the author of Teaching that Transforms: Why Anabaptist-Mennonite Education Matters and a professor of history at Goshen College. “So education at Goshen College is ‘worth it’ for straightforward economic reasons alone.”

But the financial case for the value of a Mennonite college, university or seminary education only tells part of the story.

Education that transforms

Back on the financial aid page: “The key is to think of [education] in terms of value. While the cost of college may initially be a bit of a shock, step back, take a deep breath and think about the experiences and lifelong advantages a Hesston education provides.” This appeal to the value of a Mennonite education is an extremely important part of the argument.

“As Anabaptists, we are part of a tradition that measures worth in more than monetary terms,” says Rachel Swartzendruber Miller, vice president of admissions and financial aid at Hesston. “Mennonite colleges and universities not only offer course credits and degrees, we provide transformational opportunities for our students to fully discover themselves and their place in God’s mission in the world.”

Graduates of these schools frequently point to impossible-to-quantify personal growth as one of the most important parts of their educations there.

“Attending Goshen College was a seminal time in my development,” says Peter Eash-Scott, a 1999 graduate, now a stay-at-home dad in Newton “It probably is one of the most influential things that has informed who I am, what I value and who I strive to be.”

Shared, reinforced values

Spending four years in a learning environment surrounded by people who held similar values, Eash-Scott adds, provided “a safe place to explore my faith and challenge my understanding of God, myself and the faith community,” both in and out of the classroom.

Close, caring relationships between students and faculty often are another important aspect of an education at a Mennonite institution.

“The faculty and staff here are part of our community,” says Clark Oswald, associate director of admissions at Bethel. “We care for our neighbors. That’s something as Mennonites that we learn in church growing up, and at Bethel we do that. … There’s just kind of this underlying sense of ‘we’re in this together.’ ”

Michelle Roth-Cline, a 2000 graduate of EMU, called the mentoring role of faculty “absolutely invaluable.” Now a pediatric ethicist for the , Roth-Cline says her education at EMU prepared her for medical school as well as her classmates coming from Ivy League and other prestigious schools. At the same time, what she learned about building relationships has served her equally well.

Learning to care for people

“I learned more about how to care for other people at EMU than I did in medical school. Simply knowing how to care for other people in this way has opened all kinds of doors both personally and professionally that I never would have imagined possible when I was choosing a college,” Roth-Cline says.

Leah Roeschley, a 2011 graduate of Bluffton, says her education there set the stage for her own spiritual growth. The opportunity to explore Mennonite faith and spirituality, combined with “space to ask questions [and] space to access and receive counsel” allows students to “claim a faith that is truly their own,” she says.

“My Mennonite education was worth it because my college experience was bracketed with values that resonated with me,” says Roeschley, a registered dietitian in Bloomington, Ill. “Those values were in the background of everything I did at Bluffton. … I left not only fully equipped for the field of dietetics, but I also left with … a deeper understanding of who I was.”

A related role played by Mennonite higher education is the development of future church leaders and members.

Developing leaders

“There is strong and long-standing research that shows that students who graduate from a Mennonite college are far more likely to participate after college in a Mennonite congregation, our denominational service agencies and leadership positions in the denominational structures. Mennonite higher education is not only a great value for students, we are of great value to our denomination,” says Koop Liechty, the admissions director at Goshen.

, director of admissions at (EMS), says that study at a Mennonite seminary puts Anabaptist “theology, history, polity and biblical understandings” at the center of the curriculum. At a non-Mennonite school, she adds, these topics—key in the development of church leaders—would often be relegated to electives.

Ron Guengerich, a 1974 graduate of (AMBS), says his education gave him a lifelong love of scholarship and the church while bringing the Bible alive as “a challenging and transforming ‘word.’ ” Now the pastor of Silverwood Mennonite Church in Goshen, he says he left well prepared for work within the church and eager to continue advanced study of the Old Testament.

Given the relatively low pay offered to people entering church leadership and ministry positions, Amstutz says EMS is concerned with the growing cost of attendance and believes all levels of the denomination need to “find ways to help support students financially.”

There is also a converse question of worth to consider: What would be the price of not having strong educational institutions?

“It’s impossible to put a money value on effective and visionary leadership for the church,” says Sara Wenger Shenk, president of AMBS. “Most of us don’t get it that healthy communities thrive … because they have compassionate, competent and confident leaders.”

Building community

“Thank God for those who remember that the cost of ignorance and immaturity given full sway in local congregations is far greater than an investment in those who are ready to become masters of the craft,” she says.

According to those interviewed for this article, the sum of an educational experience at a Mennonite educational institution is greater than its individual parts, with academic growth and personal development building upon and informing each other.

“We feel very strongly about our value and the high quality of education that we provide to our students,” says Good. His statement is echoed by his counterparts at other institutions. “At EMU, students receive an education in which they are challenged to move beyond their comfort zone, to think critically about the world around them, to strengthen their core values and beliefs and to be leaders and forces for change and justice in their communities.”

Courtesy The Mennonite, Jan. 1, 2013

Super Saturday is one of VASFAA’s annual service projects where individuals seeking funding for post-secondary education can receive FREE, one-on-one assistance in completing the Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form. The FAFSA is used by colleges, universities and career-technical schools across the country to determine eligibility for student federal financial aid.

VASFAA is hosting more than 60 Super Saturday sites at high schools, colleges, and community and civic centers across the Commonwealth of Virginia.  Each Super Saturday site will offer two financial aid presentations to discuss and simplify the federal and state financial aid process.

Participating sites will also have computers available for students and parents to apply for federal aid electronically, along with volunteer financial aid experts to assist.

This event is open to students and parents of all grade levels, including returning college students and those interested in .

The focus of Super Saturday is to offer one-on-one assistance in completing the FAFSA.  Once the student leaves this event, he/she will have initiated the financial aid process for any college they are interested in attending and will have met the priority filing date for most Virginia colleges.

VASFAA understands that the financial aid process can be daunting. We hope that by offering this opportunity to students and parents, we can help ease this process for hundreds of Virginia residents.

As an incentive for attending Super Saturday, students will have chance to win a $100 Book Scholarship. A Book Scholarship will be awarded to one student at each Super Saturday site to be used at the winner’s college of choice during the 2012-13 academic year.

For more information about Super Saturday 2012, visit .

VASFAA is an organization of individuals who administer financial aid programs or who are otherwise active in a financial aid-related profession. Its mission is to maintain an organization that promotes the professional growth and collaboration of its members in order to serve fairly the needs of students, families, and institutions in matters related to financial and informational resources that support students’ post-secondary education goals.  The organization is determined to help students pursue and attain their educational goals.

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