by our College Data Analytics TeamCollege Factual analyzes over 2,000 colleges and universities in its annual rankings and ranks them in a variety of ways, including most diverse, best overall quality, best for non-traditional students, and much more.
Messiah University was awarded 31 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is education.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
Messiah landed the #679 spot in College Factual's 2025 ranking of best overall colleges in the United States. The higher ed experts analyzed 2,152 colleges and universities across the nation to determine this ranking.
Messiah is also ranked #40 out of 103 schools in Pennsylvania.
The acceptance rate at Messiah University is 79%. That's higher than the rate at many schools, but still low enough to be considered somewhat selective. If you want to get in, you'll need good grades and to be able to show that Messiah is a good fit for you.
About 57% of students accepted to Messiah submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 550 and 670. Math scores were between 540 and 670.
With a student to faculty ratio of 13 to 1, Messiah University is about average in this regard as the nationwide rate is 15 to 1. While this does not translate directly to class size, it's a good indicator of how much time professors will have to spend with their students on a one-on-one basis.
Another measure that is often used to estimate how much access students will have to their professors is how many faculty members are full-time. The idea here is that part-time faculty tend to spend less time on campus, so they may not be as available to students as full-timers.
The full-time faculty percentage at Messiah University is 48%. This is comparable to the national average of 47%.
Messiah University has a freshmen retention rate of 86%. That's a good sign that full-time students like the school and their professors enough to want to stick around for another year. It's also a sign that the admissions team did a good job in choosing applicants who were a good fit for the school.
Students are considered to have graduated on time if they finish their studies within four years. At Messiah the on-time graduation rate of first-time, full-time students is 75%. That is great when compared to the national average of 33.3%
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Messiah University.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 2,614 undergraduates at Messiah with 2,424 being full-time and 190 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $12,996 | $15,320 | $16,358 | $22,397 | $29,871 |
The net price is calculated by adding tuition, room, board and other costs and subtracting financial aid.Note that the net price is typically less than the published for a school. For more information on the sticker price of Messiah, see our tuition and fees and room and board pages.
It's not uncommon for college students to take out loans to pay for school. In fact, almost 66% of students nationwide depend at least partially on loans. At Messiah, approximately 62% of students took out student loans averaging $10,343 a year. That adds up to $41,372 over four years for those students.
Get more details about the location of Messiah University.
Contact details for Messiah are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | One University Avenue, Mechanicsburg, PA 17055 |
| Phone: | 717-766-2511 |
| Website: | www.messiah.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Other Health Professions | 86 | NA |
| Rehabilitation & Therapeutic Professions | 64 | NA |
| Business Administration & Management | 58 | $43,029 |
| Nursing | 55 | $73,788 |
| Teacher Education Subject Specific | 43 | $50,825 |
| Romance Languages | 42 | NA |
| Music | 42 | NA |
| Marketing | 33 | $45,748 |
| Health Sciences & Services | 31 | $28,275 |
| Human Development & Family Studies | 27 | $32,943 |
Online learning is becoming popular at even the oldest colleges and universities in the United States. Not only are online classes great for returning adults with busy schedules, they are also frequented by a growing number of traditional students.
In 2022-2023, 1,156 students took at least one online class at Messiah University. This is an increase from the 817 students who took online classes the previous year.
| Year | Took at Least One Online Class | Took All Classes Online |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-2023 | 1,156 | 559 |
| 2021-2022 | 817 | 584 |
| 2020-2021 | 1,468 | 501 |
| 2018-2019 | 549 | 463 |
If you’re considering Messiah University, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against Messiah? Pit them head to head with College Combat, our free interactive tool that lets you compare college on the features that matter most to you!
Footnotes
*The racial-ethnic minorities count is calculated by taking the total number of students and subtracting white students, international students, and students whose race/ethnicity was unknown. This number is then divided by the total number of students at the school to obtain the racial-ethnic minorities percentage.
References
More about our data sources and methodologies.