@harrypottereatspie Thank you very much for that suggestion. S22 is putting together quite an interesting list of colleges to research right now!
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haha i bet !! what is your son planning to major in?
Pell Grants come from the Federal government.
The funding does not come from the State of California.
You fill out the FAFSA.
If you are eligible, then the grant will be part of his financial aid package for whichever school he attends.
The funding is not very much, but it will add to his funds, it’s a set amount. (They generally run from $650 to just over $6k per year based on the family income).
It’s not enough to make the OOS fees and R&B for the UC’s.
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Well, since he’s never met any other Asian kids, he wants to learn more about his heritage and major in Asian studies. Although technically he’s Asian American. Probably seems a weird choice for a kid from Wyoming.
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that’s entirely cool ! i’m asian as well :] chinese american here !! oxy has Chinese studies, east asian studies, and Japanese studies majors. does he know what he plans to do as in a career?
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We are of Chinese heritage as well! But he loves anime so wants to study Japanese as his language. He doesn’t know what he wants to do as a career yet but wants to live in Japan some day so we will have to see where that leads eventually.
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Where are you from and what do you want to study?
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im from southern california :] and i’m a political science major but i might major in international relations, and for northwestern (although its not my dream school) i’ll apply as a double major in journalism and poli sci. and as of now i’m entertaining the idea of minoring in gender and sexuality studies. the endgoal is to be a journalist though!
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@aunt_bea To be honest, I’m pretty sad now. I really thought we did a good job saving for college but we clearly had no idea how expensive it was these days.
But I do appreciate everyone explaining it all. I’m glad we found all this out now. I’ll let S22 research schools you’ve listed here (he also got some good suggestions somewhere else on this site) and then we will sit down and figure out which ones we can afford. And which ones might give us enough aid.
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You are so brave! I really admire you for wanting to go into journalism. We need our best and brightest doing good journalism these days, especially with a strong understanding of politics and international relations! Good luck!
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ahh thank you so much !! i’m really interested in poli sci and if anything, politics is an interesting field to get into so if journalism doesn’t work out, politics it is 
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Politics?! Now that’s a truly scary field, 
but I really admire you for being willing!
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really walking the line between writing the news and making the news… i realize the irony LOL. anyways best of luck to your son !! hope he finds some schools he likes !
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Make sure you run the NPC’s (Net Price Calculator) on each school’s website. They’re usually pretty accurate.
Apply to the privates in California.
Look into WUE. There are some good schools in Washington and Oregon that are WUE.
None of us saved enough money for our kids. We had 529 accounts for each child, and, in the end, the kids had to borrow some monies but we made them invest in their education by having them work their summers and breaks to pay for their expenses.
You will find something that fits. Good luck!
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Thank you! And good luck to you too! I think starting in journalism where you are trained to research facts and learn to look at things from all perspectives will be a great base for going into politics.
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Thank you for the encouragement and suggestions! I’m sure we’ll find some good options.
Note that there is a difference between Asian studies and Asian American studies as college majors.
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Oh, forgot that he may get a Pell grant of about $5k based on your EFC, so that brings up the budget to about $27k (including both federal direct loan and some work earnings from him). That may be somewhat less limiting than $22k, but still fairly limiting. Unless you can add more per year out of current income…
Pell is a federally funded grant. If you qualify for it…you get it. It’s a grant so does not need to be paid back. The maximum pell, however, is in the $6000 range…so it’s not going to fund a UC at OOS costs.
A couple of points captured above worth highlining
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The state is huge and more geographically diverse than many people realize. They aren’t a monolith. Each UC is an a very different location and student experience is markedly different.
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Not sure of your kids stats but, if he’s competitive for even the mid teir UCs, he’d probably get great merit aid from a CA private like LMU, USD, Chapman, Santa Clara and the like.
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Depending on his intended major, several CSUs participate in WUE -CPP, Chico and Sonoma are all worth a look. UNR, Boise State, NAU, OrState, and So Oregon all attract a lot of CA kids. (my son LOVES Ft Lewis in Durango Co. a WUE school that’s really the antitheists of typical UC so, probably not what you are looking for.)