<p>If I have an EFC of 0, and have about $3500 in work study and $3500 in subsidized loans.</p>
<p>If I'm going to receive a $5000 scholarship, how should it go towards the loans and work study? Also if I want to purchase a laptop, does the money have to all go towards the work study or loans?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>The scholarship will go towards the loans/workstudy (don’t know which one first).</p>
<p>The school takes all your grants and scholarships and applies it to tuition/fees/room/board first, then gives you the rest… and you can use that for anything, such as a laptop.</p>
<p>I don’t think it will go towards the loan/workstudy first. I believe it will go towards grants first instead.</p>
<p>Are you sure? That would mean that $20000 worth of scholarships is just as helpful as having no scholarships.</p>
<p>I think that you can adjust how much you have in loans and work study (with a limit on subsidized and on work study). It seems that it is better to take advantage of work study if you want it available in later years, though.</p>
<p>I’m just wondering what is typically better to have, loans that don’t collect interest until after I graduate, or doing work study. I’m leaning on minimizing loans, but I don’t know how easy it is to get a work study job (One that will give good work experience, maybe in engineering department or a lab). </p>
<p>Does anyone have experience with work study jobs? Were they helpful in terms of your resume and future job prospects? Is it fairly easy to get $3500 in a semester?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>UC financial aid is based on a formula. The financial need is budget minus EFC, and is first met by loans and workstudy(both capped to a certain amount), with the rest met by grants. Your outside scholarship money will be thrown into the grants pool, as do Cal grants, UC grants, UC Berkeley grants, and scholarships managed by UC/UC Berkeley.
For freshmen with zero EFC, your financial aid will consist of 4500 subsidized loan, 3500 workstudy, and (budget minus 8000) grants. I think some or all of the workstudy can be shifted to unsubsidized loan.</p>
<p>Berkeley doesn’t explicitly list this on their website, but I found it on the UCSD website and this is likely to apply to Berkeley as well because they’re both in UC system:
From [About</a> Undergraduate Scholarships](<a href=“http://www.ucsd.edu/current-students/finances/financial-aid/types/scholarships/index.html]About”>Scholarships)</p>
<p>Facts about scholarships:
Scholarships are gift aid, money you do not have to repay.
Scholarships are awarded for either academic merit only, or merit and additional criteria such as major of interest, leadership, or financial need.
If you receive scholarship(s), they may replace your other financial awards in the following order:
Work-study
Perkins Loan
Parent PLUS Loan
Stafford Loan
Grants
Scholarships that replace work-study reduce the number of hours you need to work, and those that replace loans reduce your future loan debt.</p>
<p>So in your case, the $5000 will go towards $3500 work study and $1500 loans. It doesn’t seem like you have a choice as to where the outside scholarships go, but you can always check with the Financial Aid Office because they’re very flexible. I’m here with the Regents’ Scholarship (EFC ~$500) and because my housing costs are over the housing allowance, I applied for a budget appeal and they supplemented it with additional grants, which is amazing and extremely helpful.</p>
<p>What field do you plan to go into? A lot of work-study jobs are available if you’re planning to do research in a biology lab. They’re not advertised anywhere in particular, but if you work for a professor long enough, you can ask about work-study because the professors get some form of benefit out of it I think. Both labs that I have worked in offered work-study to me, but I wasn’t eligible. The number of hours you can work also depends on the professor.</p>