So as the title of this post says. The email I got said:
"Greetings from the Office of Financial Aid and Scholarships,
We are pleased to announce the availability of your financial aid award offer for the 2023-24 academic year.
Access your award information by:
Visiting our website at (UCI Financial Aid Website)
Select ‘My Aid’ in the top right-hand corner of the page.
Select the ‘Fall 2023 through Summer 2024’ academic year.
Select ‘My Aid Award’.
YOU MUST COMPLETE STEPS 1 THROUGH 4.
You should log in and accept your awards as soon as possible. Make sure you log in, review your awards and complete all the tasks on “My To Do List” to ensure that your aid is available to pay your fees."
So I am just confused because I did submit the Statement of Intent to Participate (SIP) for my major at UCI, but I have not heard anything from them and I am very very certain that I have 0 chance of getting accepted off the waitlist, in matter of fact, I already accepted my financial aid offer at my 2nd choice school (loan + Pell grant + scholarship) way before I received this email.
So my question is, why would UCI send me this award offer, when I already accepted another financial aid offer at another school, is this indicative of them taking me off the waitlist for admission? Please give me your insights.
It’s possible that you got accepted from the waitlist, but it’s also possible that the financial aid office released packages for waitlisted students by mistake (computer error). The only way to know for sure is to call admissions.
If you did get accepted at UCI off the waitlist and want to attend, you are allowed to withdraw from the first school. You may end up losing your deposit there but you are allowed to do this.
You should probably accept the financial aid offer and follow the steps.
The reason I say, this is because the UC’s are incredibly large schools. Their financial aid departments are generally on a different floor or a different building.
They are told to prepare financial aid packages for students who have applied for financial aid in order to meet the State of California’s deadlines. We’re fortunate, in California, in that our state government dedicates a large amount of State funds towards the education of our college students. The state wants an educated populace.
No, the financial aid department doesn’t intend to imply that you were accepted. They are usually required to have financial aid estimates to the State’s accounting departments.
The only way that you can really find out if you were accepted is to call admissions. Please don’t feel intimidated by that. They’re really nice on the phone, They will be a little rushed because they have to meet deadlines now; you can ask to speak to a staff member and not a student aid.