Will the mom be working in CA as the family’s principal bread earner?
FYI
http://www.ucop.edu/residency/establishing-residency.html
Since parents are married and father staying in HK is presumably the principal income earner, I don’t see how you will be able to demonstrate that you have severed residence ties from HK and are living in CA for other than educational purposes.
That is also my understanding: the principal payer(s) of tuition must live, work, and pay taxes in California to qualify for in-state tuition. So if mom isn’t working and presumably earning enough to support herself and son and pay his tuition, then you’re still in an out-of-state situation.
Thank you, your comments are very helpful. I will adjust my plan.
To avoid misunderstanding again, he can still file FAFSA after receiving GC. Am I right?
Yes, he can file the FAFSA as soon as he has his GC. It is based on income from the previous year, and assets on the date that it is filed. You can print out the current formula and take a look at it: http://ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/090214EFCFormulaGuide1516.pdf
happymomof1, thank you.
In the EFC formula, parent contribution calculation is mainly based on parent income and asset. It also mentions that family home shall not be included in Net worth of investments. If we buy a house after landed, our net asset value will be much reduced. Then our contribution will be low, am I correct? Thanks.
I’m hoping you know that with a Green Card you have to file (and pay) US taxes on your worldwide income. Luckily for you Hong Kong signed a dual-tax agreement with the US not too long ago, so you will get credit on your US taxes for whatever you have paid to the Hong Kong Inland Revenue. That works as long as where you are coming from has higher taxes than the US, but it really bites when you come from a lower tax place!
For FAFSA, you have to put down all your assets, but the value of your primary residence is not included in the calculation. So if you buy a place in CA, the value of that house won’t count in your assets- but if you still have a place in HK it will count as an asset.
And as a reminder, even if you and your son move to CA and buy a house it is not automatic that after one year you qualify as in-state. CA reviews each case:
It doesn’t mean you won’t, either. Just a caution.
The FAFSA is used to determine if a student is eligible to receive a federal Pell grant of up to ~$5k. The maximum income level to qualify for a Pell grant is roughly $50k. However, a $5500 grant isn’t going to go far toward paying costs at CA colleges. Unless your primary wage earner has been living and working in CA since Aug 2015 your son will be considered OOS in Aug 2016, which means your family contribution will be the full $50k+ OOS rate. I believe that once he starts as an OOS student, it’s extremely tough, if not impossible, to get in-state rates at CA colleges.
Buying a house in CA in Dec. 2015 then flying back to Hong Kong to live won’t make your son a CA resident in Feb/March 2016. Even if he and your wife move into the home in Aug 2016, he won’t be considered a CA resident for tuition purposes. The family’s primary residence won’t be considered for financial aid (on the FAFSA), but if you own a home in Hong Kong then the value of one of the homes will be counted. If you don’t provide complete and accurate information on your applications then your son’s acceptances can be rescinded, his diplomas revoked, and he can face federal charges and deportation. Claiming to be a US resident while actually living in Hong Kong is the kind of thing that can get you into trouble. It’s not really worth it to gain a $5500 grant. And if your income is above ~$50k and/or you already own a home in Hong Kong, you probably won’t get that anyway.
I have recently become a big fan of community colleges. I’ve been taking a couple of classes at Skyline College and I was pleasantly surprised by the level of instruction, as well as the dedication and enthusiasm the faculty displayed for teaching. (Alas, teaching introductory classes to large crowds of students is not among the strengths of Stanford. Expect to spend a lot of time with foreign graduate student TAs who are generally underprepared to teach. I would expect similar experiences at research universities like Berkeley or UCLA.)
If money is a concern, I would encourage you to consider the CC + UC transfer option. OOS tuition at community colleges in California is still relatively cheap, and the UCs would likely classify your son an in-state applicant if the entire family has lived in the state on a green card for 1-2 years prior to the application cycle.
Collegemon3717, austinmshauri, thanks for the kind advices. I understand the importance of integrity of claiming to be a US resident. We do not own a house in Hong Kong.
b@r!um, you are so nice. Thanks. We will search Skyline College. Do you know they are good at Physics major?
Just to be clear, @twosonspa, community colleges are 2-year schools, so they don’t have very many “majors” - a physics student would focus on his/her general education requirements (all the history, literature, etc.) and some very basic prerequisites for the major. After transferring to a 4-year university, that’s when the student would complete all the higher-level courses necessary for the major.
And here I do have to caution you: I’m not sure that a community college would be a good place to begin a major as demanding as physics. A friend’s son dropped out of the major after transferring to UC Berkeley from a community college (where he was a consistent A-student.) He felt he simply did not have the math and physics background, and could not keep up with the classes or other physics students at Berkeley (which has one of the best physics departments in the country.)
Maybe b@r!um can offer some other perspective. The student attended De Anza College, a respected community college in the Bay Area.
I do agree with katliamom that community college is not the best place to focus on a major early - they don’t offer the advanced coursework to do that. That being said, there’s a few thoughts I wanted to throw out there:
Berkeley has a reputation for poor math instruction, and the math department has recently sparked a national controversy for firing a sequence of well-liked math instructors (when one of them decided to sue). Rumor goes that the tenured faculty don’t care about teaching non-majors and don’t want to look bad in comparison to more engaging junior instructors. Again, students are probably better off getting their math foundation elsewhere…
Many other “prestigious” universities like to teach their introductory math courses too abstractly in a way that goes over the head of many students in the room. (The youngsters are smart enough to adapt and figure out how to pass these courses, but that does not mean that they learned much in the process. Abstraction is useful and valuable, but not as a first introduction to a topic). I saw that happen a lot at the University of Pennsylvania.
I am talking so much about math because I studied math myself. I am not qualified to judge the quality of physics instruction.
I am not advocating for community college for everybody. I just wanted to throw that out there as a viable alternative path in case paying out-of-state tuition at Berkeley or UCLA would be a hardship for your family. Taking a gap year (or two) can be a valuable experience as well. I noticed that a lot of my friends who studied “theoretical” subjects like math or physics ended up regretting their choice of major once they come out of their academic mindset. Now they want to contribute to the world and it’s really hard to do that as a mathematician or physicist.
Great info – and very interesting about Cal math dept. Thanks as always.
It’s a good point of view. Appreciated with thanks!
It is hard to make decision if admitted by “prestigious” universities.
My son prefers local safety colleges instead of US community college. He has a good chance to enter into science major in top local colleges. If he is rejected by high reach US colleges and study in Hong Kong, will he lose his permanent resident?
Yes, he might lose his green card if he is not living in the US. In theory, permanent residents can take a number of steps to preserve their permanent residence status if they want to live outside of the US temporarily. Those steps include applying for a [re-entry permit](http://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/B5en.pdf) before leaving the US, or for a [returning resident visa](Returning Resident Visas) after the permanent resident status is considered “abandoned”.
In practice, it is up to the immigration officer at the port of entry (i.e. the airport) to decide if your son is a prima facie permanent resident of the US. If the immigration officer does not believe that your son has his permanent home in the US, he may deny him entry, despite a valid green card or re-entry permit. (This happens a lot when green card holders try to “game the system” and enter the US several times a year for short periods of time to maintain their permanent resident status, while appearing to have their primary residence in another country.)
If the immigration officer denies him entry as a permanent resident, he can appeal to an immigration judge who has the final say. However, if your son has never lived in the US for any length of time, and starts college in Hong Kong after obtaining his green card, it will be hard to make a case that he considers the US his primary and permanent home. (I have heard of people making a successful case when they wanted to finish a foreign degree they had already started before obtaining their green card.)
Your family should think carefully about your overall plans for immigration. If the plan is for the entire family to settle permanently in the US, then your son should study here. It will be much easier for him to find a job in the US with a US degree, and there will be no worries about losing his green card status.
How good is your son’s English? Perhaps he could enroll in an intensive English course here for a semester or a year while he looks for good places to complete his undergraduate degree.
b@r!um, happymomof1, your information and advice are always helpful, thank you both.
My son’s English should be ok. Suppose he takes a gap year, are his SAT and Subject Tests results valid for another year’s application? He got very high marks in recent tests.
On a separate note, my elder son’ major is architecture and will finish undergraduate in 2016, is he difficult to find a job in US?
SAT and subject tests are valid for a number of years, so your son won’t have to retake them.
I don’t know anything about the job market for architects here. If that son has good grades, it might be worth it for him to apply to a short grad program here in order to develop the network of contacts he will need when he starts job hunting.
Katliamom and all, I post a new thread in college & university _UCSB. Please comment at your convenience. Thanks.