<p>Hi everyone! I’m going to be a freshmen at cal poly slo this fall and I have a question regarding the total cost of attendance. I received enough financial aid to cover the cost of tuition and room and board however I saw that the university is charging students for transportation, personal/miscellaneous, and books/supplies. My question is how does the university know my transportation, books/supplies, and personal/miscellaneous needs and costs? Also the school says that I will need to find the money to pay for those costs that I mentioned above. So do I really have to pay the university the costs outside of tuition, and room/board or not???</p>
<p>Those are estimates on transportation, books/supplies etc… How much you spend depends upon you. They are just trying to give you an overall picture of the costs.</p>
<p>So what you’re saying is that officially all I owe to cal poly directly are the tuition, and room/board costs. The other costs mentioned above would not be payed directly to the university but come out of my pocket. </p>
<p>Yes, bkallday1, that is correct. :-)</p>
<p>Yeah, that’s correct. I believe the way Financial Aid works is they give you the money you are awarded and you manually pay the fees (tuition and room/board) with it. The rest of the aided money could be used for whatever you want but should be used for transportation, food, books, etc first. That’s how it works at the CC I’m attending right now and I don’t expect it to be different when I attend CPSLO.</p>
<p>The other “costs” of attendance are estimates the school has come up with in regards to all the things you mentioned. I’ve always found that it usually costs less for the things they estimate, especially if you get your books used from Amazon or something.</p>
<p>What bkallday1 said is correct, even room/board you can buy on your own if you’re getting off-campus housing (which is sometimes cheaper) instead of on-campus. And as mentioned previously, most of the costs mentioned on the Financial Aid letter are just estimates based on data that they collect. The only cost that is really set in stone is tuition/fees and room/board if you get on-campus housing. The other costs vary based on how much you want to spend. </p>
<p>Some students like to stay on the cheap side and end up spending less than what is listed under each cost while other students choose to spend more. College is really only as expensive as you make it.</p>
<p>You’ll be paying for tuition, roam/board, and a meal plan (freshmen) off the bat. There are 3 options: pay it all off initially, pay in payments, or use financial aid to cover it.</p>