<p>Regarding keeping the school filled to capacity, it certainly looks like spring admissions serves that purpose. Early or late graduation, or a semester off at a co-op job or internship, is likely to result in higher fall than spring enrollment under normal circumstances; having some freshmen start in spring can help balance that out. Note that FPF offered to those spring admits includes only a small selection of inexpensive freshman level non-lab courses.</p>
<p>but the five percent isn’t the one percent, i’m not rich, they are </p>
<p>Yeah, gimme a break. Anyone can live outside their means. But people with higher income have a much easier time not doing so if they adjust their standard of living than people in the 50k bracket. As much as you bring up your anecdotes of 150k family with 3 kids, there are plenty of 50k families with 3 or more kids. If they can live on that income then surely a family with 150k can live on that income as well.</p>
<p>if all of your kids are college age, and you make that amount of money, and you can’t afford to send them all to college, the only people your kids should be mad at is you. And that’s due to the mismanagement of your finances.</p>
<p>In regards to the OP, i think it’s pretty clear that this is just a political move by Berkeley. A move which attempts to show that they’re not just a public university in virtue of name, unlike others which seem to have abandaoned their missions as public universities (e.g. Michigan, UVa, etc.) </p>
<p>My question is, even setting this limit, would berkeley be a cheaper alternative than top privates? i mean people in this income level would probably have high GPA/test scores, and hence, would get good merit aid. And if this was the case, privates would still be a better option. So i’m not sure if this would really make much of a difference.</p>
<p>I hope someone knows whether or not MCAP takes into consideration multiple children from the family in college at once. Will someone please respond? I have gone round and round with emails to Berkeley without a definitive answer. Their financial aid people say I have to fill out the FAFSA. I know that, but that does not preclude them answering this question now.</p>
<p>The Choice blog on the New York Times reports that in addition to the family contribution, there is an expected $8,000 student contribution. This seems higher than the usual student contribution at other schools.
[Berkeley</a> to Increase Aid to Middle-Class Students - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/medina-berkeley/]Berkeley”>Berkeley to Increase Aid to Middle-Class Students - The New York Times)</p>
<p>A family of 5 making 50K is considered low-income, not middleclass. In SF bay area, they would struggle to make ends meet unless living in subsidized housing.</p>
<p>The essence is I feel there isnt much to get excited about this “middle class break”…</p>
<p>chrisrb:</p>
<p>Your comments hae really gone on the path to being impermissible political diatribes, but in any case, comments like yours that tuition should be “free” are exactly the reason this country has a massive deficit, and the reason we are going the way of Greece. Everyone wants someone else to pay for them.</p>
<p>As for the “evil” 1% that you say have taken over the country, the REALITY is that the rich in your state pay PLENTY in taxes. You have the highest state income tax in the entire country. It is very hard for a well paid salaried employee getting a W-2 to avoid paying taxes.</p>
<p>Nothing is FREE. Someone is paying for it. So you would no doubt say, “make the evil one percent pay”. The problem with that is that there are not enough evil one percenters out there to pay for all the schemes that you and others have come up with to spend THEIR money, even if you taxed them at 100%. You want THEIR money to pay for your health care. You want THEIR money to pay for your college tuition. AND, you want THEIR money to be used to reduce the deficit. </p>
<p>There are many places to cut back. For example, maybe not every kid should have a “right” to go away to college. Not so long ago, kids went to their local college, and lived at home. Maybe the State of California should not be spending millions to churn out anthropology and sociology majors.</p>
<p>The in-state tuition that kids pay in California, and that they are always protesting against, is to people like me, an out of state, who would like my son to go to Berkeley and UCLA, a BARGAIN.</p>
<p>New York City had free tuition at its City Colleges for many years. It was a disaster.</p>
<p>I am a middle class parent sending my child to Berkeley. He was a NM Finalist and could have gone to a number of small engineering schools for free but he wanted the CS program at Cal, and we pay full fare tuition (he is an only child, and that makes enough of a difference to disqualify us for fin aid). We are Bay Area residents, and we get by on $110k income, but the tuition is a huge chunk of money for us. A lot of my son’s Cal friends are paying close to nothing to go there, and frankly I get a little resentful that we get stuck subsudising their tuition. And these people are not poor, they just have lots of kids in the family. I hope this new program will help us, although I am not holding my breath.</p>
<p>A terrific step, great news at the end of a crazy semester. Kudos to Birgeneau and the rest of the administration for making this happen…hopefully will result in a boost to the yield rate. (The only problem is that the admissions office can’t seem to predict yield well at all, and continues to over-enroll.)</p>
<p>This is a very smart move for Berkeley. Increasingly the citizens who pay the vast majority of the taxes in the state are having a harder and harder time (1) getting their kids into Berkeley, and (2) paying for it once they get there. The high tuition model supported with huge increases in out of state students paying full tariff supporting huge numbers of students paying very little is not completely sustainable IMO. Taxpayers who pay most of the taxes the state collects are saying “no thanks” to paying more, which makes it harder and harder for the legislature to fund the UC’s. And can you blame them? Their own kids have a harder time getting in (like everyone these days), and when they do they are paying ever increasing rates. I am no fan of Berkeley and the hunt for out of state tuition dollars as those who read this board know, but in the face of the current situation I think this move was a good one given the circumstances.</p>
<p>Now go cut 75MM a year Berkeley Chancellor by following the recommendations of your own commission to cut the ridiculous fat and multiple layers of non-coherent, overlapping management, so that you can minimize future tuition increases for all students. Going to happen? No, of course not. Its the DMV from an administrative standpoint, but one can always hope. Students want to protest something? Go protest that. The fat there has no benefit to your educations in the classroom.</p>
<p>I’m a bit disheartened by all of the political noise on this thread. We are all suffering from the perfect storm investment losses and exploding tuition rates; let’s be constructive. </p>
<p>Anyhow, good on Cal for starting this…about time! It’s true that most competitive UC’s are starting to have student bodies that are either very rich or very poor; those that have need have ample scholarship/grant opportunities, and those that earn over $200K can swing it more easily. It’s really tough for those earning between $100K - $160K to eek out $30K a year only to be crammed in with 200 others in a class with a prof that barely speaks English, if they can get into the class at all! </p>
<p>Now, what’s keeping the other UC’s from implementing this? UCSB costs just as much!</p>
<p>“only to be crammed in with 200 others in a class with a prof that barely speaks English, if they can get into the class at all!”</p>
<p>Stop complaining! Then don’t have your child go there.</p>
<p>Great for me and everyone. Top Schools are not just for the rich people anymore, it’s for everyone</p>
<p>too bad Canadian citizens like me get NOTHING at all :(</p>
<p>SIGN PETITION TO HELP LOWER CSU/UC COSTS FOR MIDDLE CLASS FAMILIES! </p>
<p>[Making</a> College Affordable Once Again](<a href=“http://www.middleclassscholarship.com%5DMaking”>http://www.middleclassscholarship.com) <-click link to read about it and sign!</p>
<p>Indeed Berkeley did do great with financial aid for my family!! we’re a very middle class family and we got over $20,000 in need based aid! THANK YOU CAL</p>
<p>I think it is a great that they try to support “middle income” families, recognizing that a public education becomes unaffordable with the tuition hikes. Why split hairs? It’s a great university, and they are trying to make it more affordable. That is a good thing, no?</p>
<p>“All students, regardless of income, are expected to contribute an average of $8,900 each year toward their educations”</p>
<p>Not cool. For a household income of $20,000, that’s still about 45%
))):</p>
<p>$8,900 per year is $35,600 over four years. Ways to cover that (for a student not living at home):</p>
<ul>
<li>subsidized Stafford loan up to $23,000 over four years</li>
<li>summer jobs over four (including pre-freshman) summers</li>
<li>part time job during academic year</li>
<li>frugal living, e.g. living in a BSC co-op saves about $3,000 per year versus off-campus financial aid budget, or $12,000 over four years; living in the cheapest dorm saves almost $2,000 per year versus the on-campus financial aid budget, or $8,000 over four years</li>
<li>parents saving some of the food and utilities budget since you won’t be living at home</li>
</ul>
<p>We actually got this and it was interesting. We have combined income of $108k. Ended up with a grant for around $5500 and subsidized loan of just $950. No work study but you can convert the loan portion into workstudy. S already decided he wants to go here. So figuring out how to make it work. I’m looking at mostly private loans >.<</p>
<p>I guess the grant kills subsidized loans. If we had the grant and full loan amount I wouldn’t be so bummed trying to figure out how to come up with the money. Because then I would probably only have to come up with around $16k, coming up with $22-25k is rough.</p>
<p>We may be in a similar boat, santookie. Just realized a couple days ago that we didn’t <em>submit</em> the FAFSA after we modified it with our 2012 tax return info. We <em>saved</em> it but didn’t submit it…duh. Can’t even blame this one on the kid. The estimate worksheet says we’ll get about a $4,800 grant, but still waiting for real numbers. Combined income was $127K last year, should be a bit more this year. Going to <em>try</em> to avoid going into debt and pay out of income. BTW, will be going through this again when younger sibs come up in a short few years. I know, cry me a river, there are people without work, with health issues, kids who can only dream of getting into any 4-year school, etc. To be honest, I’m so worried about the money, but determined to do it. If I have to eat peanut butter sandwiches for the next 10 years, I’ll do it.</p>