Lavender…your financial aid can be used for colleges costs…tuition, fees, room, board, books. The amount you get will be divided into the number of terms (3 if the school is on quarters, and 2 if on semesters). And to get the full amount, you need to be a full time student.
I sort of doubt that your UCSC financial aid award was enough to pay ALL of your costs to attend the school. So…your aid will be applied to your bill first…and you will be responsible for any additional charges.
This should have been clear on your award letter.
What are you talking about??? Financial aid “offers" in October? There is no such thing!
As far as I know, the Cal Grant is included in the financial aid package of only one UC. If you decide to attend a different UC, the award will be transferred. But, for goodness sakes, contact the UC that you’ve decided to attend and confirm this! Your Blue & Gold eligibility may or may not also impact your institutional award (that’s the money awarded by the college itself, and not by the California Student Aid Commission, which administers the Cal Grant), so you really need to contact the college’s financial aid office directly.
Or you can wait around ’til October and hope for the best . . . :-/
Good catch, Dodgersmom!
Lavender, what are you talking about…financial aid offers in OCTOBER?
Are you planning on enrolling in the spring term?
Please clarify!
@thumper1 sorry for the misunderstanding, I had made a post earlier on the previous page explaining what I meant to type earlier opposed to when I wrote" full cost," and how I made a simple question bigger than it actually was, so the problem has been solved on my part. Now, I applied for Fall, so it is odd to be in October, but that’s what the email said. I should qualify for the Blue and Gold Scholarship as well, but it was not incorporated into my financial aid either. I will give them a call tomorrow when they have open office hours and ask about this.
@lavender123 – what you posted looks like the Cost of Attendance (all the costs that are built into the standard budget at the college) NOT a financial aid offer. Your financial aid offer will probably include words like grant, scholarship, and loan.
What was your Expected Family Contribution (EFC) on your FAFSA when you filed it?
@Lavender123 - There is no “Blue and Gold Scholarship.” Blue and Gold is a promise that if your income/assets fall below a certain cutoff, your tuition and fees will be fully covered with scholarship and grant money. That scholarship and grant money could include (1) federal Pell Grant; (2) Cal Grant; (3) UCSC grant; and (4) a third party scholarship (that you applied for and won on your own). If you qualify for Blue & Gold, your tuition and fees will be covered by some combination of these kinds of grant and scholarship funds.
Yes, @arabrab I was aware of that, but thank you. I have received my financial aid offer and it has words like grant, scholarship, and loan. I asked if financial aid covers full cost of attendance, when I meant to write goes towards cost of attendance. Then I wrote what goes in to the full cost of attendance, such as room and board, tuition, personal expenses, and transportation. Then I wrote that financial aid goes towards the same things, like it goes towards tuition and room and board, but then @LuckyName said I was wrong, but then @ClaremontMom cleared up what some may have thought I meant. I was confused if it went towards certain things for different students since I was thinking how transportation seems like it is a cost that needs to be out of my own pocket, not covered by financial aid, so maybe for students with very low income it is covered. I appreciate your help though. It is solved now.
Oh okay, thanks @dodgersmom!
not really Lavenders question, but mine - it is strange that the Blue and Gold ‘eligible’ was stated and scholarships were shown on UCSB’s financial award sheet, but not on UCSC’s. The grants/scholarships on UCSCs only added up to 4,667, not the 12,804 that should be for Blue and Gold. I was thinking the same thing - who would want to wait until school starts in October to know if they were actually getting the full amount? If my child picks UCSC, we will certainly call in the next few weeks to clarify first. By the way, in case anyone else comes across this - I can now verify that Blue and Gold does not have the asset limit that Cal Grant does. We meet the income limit for Cal Grant, but not the asset limit, so I wasn’t sure we would be eligible for B&G either because nowhere does it ever state if there is an asset limit or not - just that you must have ‘financial need’, which I am now assuming means COA minus your EFC must be greater than 0.
Why wait, @jbourne? Why not call sooner, rather than later, just to put your mind at ease? And let us know what they say! 
my DD finally forwarded the email from UCSC and it does indeed say what lavender said: “Additionally, our office incorporates Blue and Gold and Middle Class Scholarship monies into financial aid offers in October for students who are deemed eligible.” It just seems strange since the other UC didn’t have any problem in figuring it out! Anyway… she is narrowing her choice down and UCSC didn’t make this cut.
@Lavender123, What’s unclear to me about all your posts is if you have a financial aid package in front of you, why don’t you know whether or not it covers all your costs? If the estimated total cost of attendance (COA) is listed ($x for tuition, $y for room and board, $z for travel and books) and your award is also listed ($x in school grants, $y in state and/or federal grants, and $z in loans), it’s not difficult to subtract the grants and loans from the total COA to get your net cost. Didn’t your school give you figures for your awards? I think NYS schools give “estimated” amounts until our state budget passes, but they’re firmed up in April, not Oct. If your schools do that, you should be able to get solid #'s way before Oct.
Hi there @austinmshauri! I thought I made this clear in past posts, I made a mistake when writing certain words, which you can see what they were if you read the past posts, and I realized I had made an easy question a bigger deal than it had to be. I understand what is going on now, so the situation has been solved. For your concern about the estimated amounts in October, I was simply explaining the email’s information.