[quote]
Estimated Cal Grant B - Access Grant 1,551.00
Federal Pell Grant Grant 5,550.00
UC Santa Cruz Grant Grant 13,929.00
UC Fee Grant Grant 672.00
Federal Perkins Loan Loan 549.00
Federal Direct Subsidized Loan Loan 3,500.00
Federal Direct Unsubsidized Ln Loan 2,000.00
Federal College Work-Study Work/Study 1,500.00
Estimated AC Grant Yr1 Grant 750.00
Parent Loan Option-Submit Form Loan 701.00</p>
<p>Aid Year Totals 30,702.00
& Qualified B&G
[/quote]
</p>
<ul>
<li>How much does attending UCSC cost? I received about 22k in grants, but will that cover my tuition and fees? What about housing and meal-plans? How much do I actually need to loan? I don't want to loan too much than necessary.</li>
<li>Is deadline to accept/decline april 15th? I thought we had til May..</li>
</ul>
<p>In regards to housing, I'll probably get into a double, triple, or quad. Meal-plan for a 7-day because my mom thinks its ridiculous if I can't eat on the weekends (if I don't go home, lol). </p>
<p>Any advice is greatly appreciated!! Thank you! =]</p>
<p>According to the speaker at Spring Spotlight last week, the cost is $30,700. Your financial aid is figured out to cover the cost of attendance. So after grants etc, they gave you loans to make up the difference.</p>
<p>Sorry, I wasn’t very clear. The $30, 702 includes in state fees, Room and Board, and estimates for books, transportation and personal expenses. If you are coming from out of state it will be over $50,000 with tuition.</p>
<p>Wow, that’s roughly 10k worth of loans for one year… :</p>
<p>Is there no way to reduce that by getting the cheapest housing option, 7-meal plan, and buying used books? I thought UCSC provided students with shuttle transportation within the school and bus to the city was free with the slug card. I’ll visit my family every once in a while but its only an hour or two-drive.</p>
<p>Do you know if students can get exact figures before taking out loans? I don’t want to loan out more money than absolutely necessary (especially cause some of those loans have interest).</p>
<p>If the class is only a 1~15 minutes away, I would walk. So if I don’t take the bus, I wouldn’t have to pay the transportation fee? Or is that mandatory of all students? If its mandatory, might as well utilize the buses to our convenience… o.o</p>
<p>Should we calculate our own budget? Or is the budget UCSC gave accurate?</p>
<p>Yeah… I think I’m going to live on campus for a year then commute. ^^; Thanks everyone.</p>
<p>Also, after we accept UCSC offer of admission, is our application status on the my.ucsc.edu supposed to change? Mine still asks to accept/decline admission. In case it didnt’ work, I tried doing the steps again but it gave me an error.
<p>Remember that aside from the tuition and fees, everything in the COA is estimated. The housing estimate for on campus living looks to be roughly based off of a double room in an apartment with a 7 day meal plan. I was always told it’s based off of a double dorm and a 7 day meal plan, but whatever. The rest can easily be reduced if you’re frugal (books, transportation, personal expenses).</p>
<p>And it’s not almost $10k in loans, it’s $6,750 in loans. $4,049 of which is subsidized (these loans will not accrue interest until a set amount of time after you graduate as the government is currently paying the interest).</p>
<p>As for the buses and shuttles, that has nothing to do with the estimated transportation cost. Yes, there are TAPS shuttles to get around campus and there are Metro buses as well. The latter requires your Slug Card to ride for “free.” You do not pay for the Metro buses directly, however, the school does pay a fee per student. So it is best to save these for when you need to go off campus to get around Santa Cruz County. Plus, these buses are needed by students who live off campus so taking up space could be preventing one of them from getting home.</p>
<p>That said, if all the shuttles are consistently full and you can’t get on, do not feel guilty about taking a Metro bus when you have to. Also remember that if we do not use the Metro buses at all, the program may be cut from the school because Santa Cruz Metro will not be making enough money off of students to justify it. However, if we don’t use the shuttles enough, the program could be cut there or number of shuttles reduced. It’s a balance that needs to be found.</p>
<p>Good rule of thumb: if going around campus, take a shuttle. If going off campus, take a Metro. If you haven’t been able to get on the last couple shuttles because they were too full, take a Metro.</p>
<p>Anywho, there is a breakdown of all of this if you look at the financial aid page in your portal. From the financial aid website (estimated fees for 2010-2011, they are subject to change):</p>
<p>On Campus
Fees: $12,732
Food and Housing: $14,172
Books and Supplies: $1,404
Transportation: $870
Personal Expenses: $1,524</p>
<p>If you have insurance through your parents, you can get that campus health insurance waived. However, if you have Kaiser, I more than highly recommend getting campus insurance. The closest Kaiser is in San Jose and trust me, if you are that sick you need to visit the doctor, getting over 17 is just not going to happen. The campus health center is awesome and I honestly pay a lot less for campus health insurance than I was paying for my individual plan (and receiving better benefits).</p>
<p>So let’s guess that the fees are locked in for now and you are given a double dorm. Let’s also assume you keep that health insurance. Your required cost would be $26,313.</p>
<p>This leaves you with an estimated **$4,389<a href=“%5BB%5D$3,798%5B/B%5D%20if%20you%20simply%20add%20up%20the%20remaining%20estimated%20fees%20instead%20of%20subtracting%20the%20required%20cost%20from%20above%20from%20the%20estimated%20cost%20of%20attendance”>/B</a>. Since these fees are related to books, supplies, transportation, and personal expenses, you can reduce these quite easily. Buy your books online, don’t go out a lot, don’t go home much, etc.</p>
<p>There really is nothing too terribly wrong with loans. Especially the ones you have. You could probably get away with only accepting the subsidized stafford and the perkins (also subsidized) and ignoring the parent and unsubsidized loan.</p>
<p>Really, the package you have is incredibly good, better than most get. And if you’re smart and frugal, you can make it work for you without any issue at all. Quite honestly, I would not commute during any of your years if your financial aid is going to remain like this. Living on campus makes getting to classes much easier and your grades will thank you for it. But that’s something you’ll need decide later.</p>
<p>^^Kender, that’s a really great post, thanks for the information.</p>
<p>So as somebody asked before, do financial aid offers come out by april 15th, or is that just a deadline?
And um, Star?
Let me just say…YOU HAVE AN AMAZING FINANCIAL OFFER. lol.</p>
<p>According to the website, as long as you submit things by April 15, you’ll have your aid offer before the acceptance deadline (May 1 for frosh). They don’t give any information beyond that that I can find ):</p>
<p>Hopefully all offers will be out several days before the deadline. Just keep an eye on your portal :)</p>
<p>Wow, thank you so much Kender! You covered and thoroughly explained a lot of the things I was confused about!! :]</p>
<p>Since there is a deadline for accepting financial awards, I want to be on the safe side. If I don’t take some of those loan offers, can I request or accept it later (as necessary)? Or calculate a rough budget right now and hope I don’t go over it? xD’</p>
<p>The credit should go to the financial aid forum and the wonderful people who frequent there. Most of my information is from them and all I’ve done is apply their knowledge to UCSC’s information combined with my personal experience. Since I pay for school myself, I have to research this stuff extensively and learn every angle I can cut costs at.</p>
<p>Also I highly recommend speaking to UCSC’s financial aid to clear up specific questions. They’re very nice and can give you much more official information than I can :)</p>
<p>thatonekidd: Do you mean private loans or stafford loans? I highly recommend against the former type unless you can find a really good interest rate through a credit union (if you happen to have access to NavyFed or USAA, their rates are sometimes good). For the latter, those are direct through UCSC.</p>
<p>However, if you absolutely need private loans, I am not aware of any specific bank requirement. But make sure you read every single document in detail before you sign for anything. Also know that a private loan will more than likely require a co-signer.</p>
<p>Star`: Hrm, that one I’m not sure on since I accepted my loans immediately. I remember reading in the financial aid forum about there being a set date when you can request loans up until, but I cannot seem to find the information on any website (UCSC or the federal loan website). I’d call the financial aid office and ask how long the offer of loans will be available.</p>
<p>I think I’m just overlooking the date somewhere.</p>
<p>schooldad: I cannot find a precise date and I do not recall having a deadline. If there is one, it would probably be listed in the award letter/email.</p>