The amount of financial aid you receive is determined based on your program. Each year the Financial Aid Support Team reviews and updates your program’s cost of attendance (a financial aid budget that includes tuition, books, internet fees, and additional educational expenses for the year) for each program prior to the beginning of the aid year. This cost of attendance tells us the maximum amount of financial aid that you can be offered for the aid year. This number will adjust to account for taking additional courses, quarters of inactivity or other individual factors.

The information you provide on the FAFSA, along with your program, assists the financial aid office in determining the type of aid you’re eligible to receive.

We will review the Student Aid Index (SAI), which is provided to Capella when we receive your FAFSA, to see if undergraduate learners are eligible for Pell Grants, Subsidized Direct Loans, and Federal Work Study. Once your eligibility for these sources of aid has been determined we will build a financial aid offer using any outside aid you have reported, Capella discounts, scholarships and Direct loans up to your cost of attendance.

It’s important to note that there are annual loan limits and lifetime limits on Pell and Direct Loans that Capella cannot ignore. These limits apply to all funding disbursed at any school you have attended. If you are at one of these limits we may not be able to award you to your full cost of attendance.

If you have been awarded up to the annual or lifetime limits in federal financial aid but still have not been awarded to your cost of attendance you can apply for credit-based loans such as federal PLUS loans or non-federal private loans to make up the difference.

Learn more about how Federal Student Aid is calculated here.