California minimum wage is pretty generous right now at $15.50 per hour. Your son could work between 10 and 20 hours a week during school, and a lot more than that during the summers. Working 10 hours a week during the school year, he could earn around 5k. Working 40 hours a week during the summer, he could earn an additional 7,500.
However, if he is going to be filing for financial aid, you should know that the first $7,600 of student income is protected and does not “ding” them for financial aid purposes. After that, they are expected to contribute 50% of their income to tuition. So he can earn at least $7,600 a year without it affecting his financial aid, and he can borrow $5,500 from the federal government for his freshman year, $6,500 for his sophomore year, and $7,500 each for his junior and senior year. Depending on your finances, some or all of these loans are subsidized and interest won’t accrue until he graduates.
All the UC schools have transfer spaces for CC in Cal. You can just do 2+2 and get a degree from a top institution for very affordable student loan. If he majors in a decent return ratio discipline, like cs or engineering, he can very likely repay his own debt with 4-5 years of work.
Make sure you fill out that FAFSA before the March 2nd deadline. He will qualify for any funding available if he gets his FAFSA in by that date. It doesn’t mean that you have to complete your taxes by then, but you should get a rough estimate into the Cal Grant Office.
Some high schools will virtually submit his transcript information automatically to the CalGrant/Student Aid Commission.
Contact the SAC for more information. They are very helpful and can give you more information on the MC Scholarship. There might be some remnants of the Blue/Gold Scholarships.
You have a good chance depending on which schools use the MC Scholarship and which schools he intends to send an application. You can ask the SAC. Good luck!!
The UC TAG program is awesome - and with free tuition for 2 years, it’s a great option.
Honestly, between the federal student loan and a Bay Area summer job, he could probably float $12,000 towards the cost of attendance for the year. My oldest kid has just 1 summer job (they thought about adding on waitressing on weekends too but decided against it) and should make about $9K. That would cover tuition at a CSU easy.
Run the net price calculators. Fill out the FAFSA - so many don’t think they qualify for financial aid, but they do.
There are a lot of colleges out there though and he may find a school that offers him enough aid - he doesn’t need to be perfect to get merit.
By doing an Americorps program, one earns a stipend equal to the Pell grant for that year (about $6200? right now). While in the program, insurance and sometimes a salary is also paid, sometimes R&B if not near home. Some of the jobs are at schools but many are out in nature.
There are the WUE schools and he may find one he can afford in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming. If you are saying you can’t pay anything toward college then he is probably best going to your local community college - which in California will be a great school. Not every kid in America gets to go to sleep away college.
Well…the FAFSA uses prior prior year tax information. So if this student will be starting college in fall 2024, the 2022 tax year would be the taxes used. Surely those taxes will have been filed by March of his senior year of high school!
I had a low gpa kid (3.3/3.4) but high ACT 35. He got free tuition at Jacksonville University in FL. And got an extremely low cost package at U of Louisiana-Lafayette.
Options to get him away include being a foreign exchange student for a year (right after senior year of high school.). This would also be a strength in a future poly sci career.
Options to get him away during college include National Student Exchange. NSE is a college exchange program that has about 200 schools, mainly in the US but a few in Canada etc. You can do up to 2 semesters of exchange at no additional cost and credits transfer automatically. You still have to pay housing, but some of the locations have low cost of living. Cal State East Bay belongs: National Student Exchange - Campuses / Location
CSU East Bay is a part of the National Student Exchange program, so if he has to commute perhaps he could save up enough money to afford a semester of NSE and go out of state for at least one semester that way (while still paying CSU tuition.)
Some of the California community colleges that offer dorms that are in the northern part of the state are:
College of the Redwoods (linked to website), with about 3700 undergrads, is about a 25m drive south of Cal Poly-Humboldt. According to its College Navigator page, tuition this past year was $1147 and room and board was $7959 for a total of $9106 prior to any California grants.
Shasta College (linked to website) has about 7100 undergrads and is located in Redding. According to its College Navigator page, tuition was $1191 and room & board $5370, though I don’t think they actually included food in that cost. So, $6561/year, prior to food coming in.
Sierra College (linked to website) has about 16k undergrads and is a bit northeast of Sacramento. According to its College Navigator page, tuition was $1156 and room & board was $7800 for a total of $8956, prior to any California grants.
The dorms seem to house fewer than 200 students, so the majority of students would be commuters, but these options seemed worth mentioning.
Cal Poly Humboldt, with about 5300 undergrads, did have 30 students graduate with a poli sci major in the most recent year of IPEDS data, so although the school has more of a tech reputation, I certainly wouldn’t eliminate it from contention. Its room & board costs are $12,540 according to its College Navigator page and the tuition is $7864, for a total of $20,404, prior to any California grants.
I’d also look at Sonoma State and Cal State: Chico and see how the costs for those compare to other ones, once the California grants are applied as both of those are more residential campuses.
I don’t think your son would qualify for WUE at U. of Montana (source) or U. of Wyoming (source).
These are some WUE schools that your son would appear to be eligible for and have relatively lower costs:
U. of Idaho (source) has about 8600 undergrads. 150% of its tuition would be $12,594 plus $9898 for room & board (College Navigator source) for a total of $22,492.
Southern Utah (source) has about 12k undergrads. Depending on whether they use weighted or unweighted, he might even get an extra $3k/year beyond WUE. Assuming they use unweighted (i.e. worst case), tuition would be $10,155 and room & board would be $8416 (per its College Navigator page), for a total of $18,571, and if they use unweighted scores, it’d be $3k less than that.
U. of Montana Western (source): This is a small residential school with about 1300 undergrads. And like Colorado College and Cornell College, it offers a 1-block system whereby students only take one class at a time. Tuition would be $7268 and room & board is $8588 (per its College Navigator page) for a total of $15,856.
Also it may help to calculate any savings from your son not being at home. Costs for his meals, extra curriculars, gas, etc. you can mentally redirect those costs to college costs.
Consider community college for 2 yr, then transfer to an in-state public university after that. Most community colleges will have guaranteed transfer agreements with a whole bunch of CSU’s and UC schools.
AND he could get CLEP credit for almost free for a freshman year’s worth of classes at www.modernstates.org with their Freshman Year For Free program. When the student takes the CLEP exam and passes it, have the test score sent to whatever college he/she is currently attending. For example, if it’s a community college, the CC will add it to the transcript. Then when student transfers to 4 yr college, that CLEP exam course equivalent will show up on the transcript to the 4 yr college as well. OR if you’re going directly to a 4 yr school, have the CLEP exam score sent to the 4 yr school.
According to The Redlands Promise | University of Redlands, Univ of Redlands has the following option (lots of other financial aid options on their website, but here’s 1 that stood out to me):
“Welcome California” - income of $125,000 or less for family of 4. Min 3.5 HS GPA. Resident of CA. Qualify for Cal Grant A. Award provides free tuition for entire freshman year, and total grant amount will remain constant for years 2-4.
This is a great suggestion. Another way to get to go away and live in a dorm with other young people is to work at national parks or other remote lodges. If you work at Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Death Valley, etc., you can earn money, get a residential community, and have a mostly no-cost social life exploring the parks with your co-workers on your days off.
True, but he needs to complete the FAFSA with current data before the March 2nd “California” deadline, for the next 4 years. (They just want to make sure that his parents have estimated numbers for the State’s Aid deadlines.)
His high school counselors will know a little about the deadlines because of the transcript transfers to the State’s Student Aid Commission re the numbers of ELC (Eligibility in the Local Context) and the MCS (Middle Class Scholarship) possible qualifiers. They want to keep those kids in-state. I think this family fits the State’s parameters perfectly for the MCS eligibility. These people are why the MCS was created. The State just approved a large chunk of the educational budget for these types of students.