<p>For people that applied in-state...</p>
<p>A thread on CC regarding NYU's financial aid got me thinking...</p>
<p>bump.......</p>
<p>It depends on your EFC... Call UCLA's Financial Aid Office and ask them about typical award packages for ____ EFC?</p>
<p>Contact Information</p>
<p>Financial Aid Office phone: (310) 825-4321</p>
<hr>
<p>You can check typical packages by school on CollegeBoard's website but UCLA's is not reported...</p>
<p>I couldn't exactly answer the question even if I knew your EFC, but according to Kiplinger's</a> Best Values in Public Colleges the avg. price paid after aid was 9-10K (out of 20-22K). This is only for kids who applied for aid.</p>
<p>^ So it is 9.5k each year after aid, for kids who applied, or 9.5k after 4 years combined? Lol I know it is probably the former and probably an obvious question, but just want to make sure. :)</p>
<p>Thanks for the info Emmeline....</p>
<p>I know how much financial aid one receives varies, but just in general, do you think most students are content with their aid? On the Princeton Review website there is a ranking of the top 20 schools that have their students the most pleased with overall FA. That list, along with the thread about NYU, had me thinking about UCLA's FA.</p>
<p>BTW, is FA the same for all the UC's?</p>
<p>Last year my son applied to 5 UCs and was accepted to all of them with approximately the same need based financial aid package (give or take $1K). </p>
<p>He was offered Regents at UCI and they met his need in full without any loans or work study. UC Davis basically did the same thing.</p>
<p>UCs use the FAFSA to determine aid. Go to finaid.com and take advantage of their EFC calculator (use Federal Methodology for the UCs). We have found the online calculator to be surprisingly accurate.</p>
<p>UCLA is not generous at all. I got $0 in financial aid. Well, then again, I am not even remotely close to qualifying, but it is a real pain in the ass when your parents believe in "pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps" aka paying for college yourself. Don't bother with UCs unless your parents plan on paying. Well, they will handle the first year for me, and I have to pull the rest of the damn money from the sky.</p>
<p>If you get regents, it is a bit doable. At ucla it is 5500, if you sell your parking permit (which is against school rules), the scholarship is like worth 6000. then you can do co-op instead of living in the dorms and then you only need to scrounge up another 10000 each year. </p>
<p>so yeah.</p>
<p>My EFC is 400...
I got about 13K grant and I took $5.5k loan per year...</p>
<p>BTW, is FA the same for all the UC's?</p>
<p>No, but the total amount is the same. UCLA and UCSD tend to provide packages with more money on work-study... That means you've to work your a** off.</p>
<p>EFC: 0</p>
<p>~16k grant</p>
<p>well ucla is publicly funded afterall</p>
<p>you might receive more financial aid at NYU compared to UCLA. even though NYU might cost more each year and you receive more in aid than LA</p>
<p>the only thing that matters is how much you pay by the end of 4 years</p>
<p>UCLA gave me the least financial aid of the UC's I got accepted into (albeit only by a thousand dollars or so per year). UCSD gave about $15,500, UCI gave about $16,500, UCB gave about $15,000, and UCR gave $16,000; where as UCLA gave me about $14,000.</p>
<p>I am still happy I got aid. It could be worse. <em>shudders</em></p>
<p>eeeeghhh. like fastmed, i got no aid at all. :/ </p>
<p>hey, if i make some changes to my fafsa right now, will ucla get it/look at it even though they already sent me my eFan? </p>
<p>so what's the highest efc needed to get any aid? my efc was pretty high, comparatively speaking (actually, what's a 'high' efc??), but it still seems like my parents are tight budgeters... :(</p>
<p>^
yeah same here i didnt get any aid at all meaning i have to take 100k+ in loans
=[
my efc was too high also</p>
<p>im trying to find good loans that are subsidized or any with low interest rate</p>
<p>It's perfectly fine to make changes to your FAFSA right now. They'll generate a new eFAN for you. Are you accepting more loans or something or rejecting amounts? </p>
<p>chanX - you're not going to need to take out 100K in loans. There are ways to reduce your costs. For one thing, the financial aid office generally overestimates the amount you need for your college expenses. Also, do you HAVE to live in the dorms all four years? Dorm life is overpriced compared to other options - apartments, UCHA Co-Op etc. I guess you could be a bum at Powell after the second week of school or whatever cuz they have a 24-hour library and hide out in the floor lounges at De Neve for the first two weeks and live off of cereal, meal coupons in the beginning of the year, and a subway diet that'll cost you approximately $5.50 for a foot-long Turkey/Ham sandwich with a small drink with the student discount card (not UCLA sponsored I think). Yeah, that's always an option as well! Not only that, summer sessions are closer to the price of in-state tuition so that might be an option. If your EFC is low, financial aid will be closer to what it should be for in-state students and will probably be a lot more generous than the general school-year. It was estimated to be approximately $100K in loans for me as an OOS student but I've managed to reduce that figure to approximately 25K over four years or so through other means, scholarships/grants, part-time job, living in the apartments, probably summer sessions for a few summers, and managing my courseload and taking a few extra courses every quarter (at least that's my plan) and perhaps shaving off a few quarters or even a year from my graduation date. Generally if your parents aren't contributing to your education, I think approximately your debt amount can be reduced to about $40-50K by the time you graduate (or even lower in my case) if you can find ways to reduce your costs. I'm not exactly a bum in Westwood or Powell for that matter either... An even more outlandish tactic might be developing a Summer-Fall-Winter schedule and saving the 8K or so for tuition in Spring Quarter... so there are definitely ways to plan and get around things and manage the life of your personal finances.</p>
<p>oh ok, thanks emmeline. when i make changes to my fafsa, do they get notified automatically or do i have to notify them? I was looking for some button to tell them i've changed my fafsa and couldn't find anything. but then again, I probably wasn't looking too well. should i just email it to them, or do they check from time to time automatically?</p>
<p>and should i accept/comfirm this eFan or wait till they get my fafsa changes?</p>
<p>Dear Heins, </p>
<p>Well, they generate an eFAN for you and you generally accept/reject which facets of the eFAN you want (e.g. not taking out any PLUS loans). Yes, they get notificed automatically and I think they routinely (or obsessively) generate new eFANs for you. If you have issues or made mistakes with submitting your eFAN you can always just call them up and ask them to generate a new eFAN for you. (Go to <a href="http://www.fao.ucla.edu%5B/url%5D">http://www.fao.ucla.edu</a> for contact information.) </p>
<p>What do you mean about changing your FAFSA? Did something occur with your parents tax forms or something? Its more difficult to request for more aid at this point I think... Perhaps you should just contact them then. I don't know why you need to change your eFAN so please clarify?</p>
<p>lol thanks emmeline for having hope in me.</p>
<p>i dont want to to exactly live out as a bum, but at the same time i would want to save money.</p>
<p>they just dont give me any money period since my efc exceeded about 10k over how much it cost for a year to attend to ucla. even that may seem a lot, my parents just dont have the money to pay for my college tuition.</p>
<p>what other ways did u do to minimize your loans? i would love to reduce my loans to about 25k when i graduate. i don't want my parents to pay too much for my education. they did a lot for me as it is</p>
<p>also i am guaranteed housing for 2 years. i've always thought that campus dorms are cheaper than apartments.</p>
<p>Dorming comes tround 12-13K a year (something like that). If you split a room in an apartment you can expect to pay around 650 a month. So yeah it costs way less. </p>
<p>So I'm guessing you signed with Citibank or something? (they don't require co-signers?)</p>