Not allowed to receive both Cal Grant and UCB Grant?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
1

<p>When I first got accepted to UCB as a transfer, my FinAid file listed roughly ~$10k under my financial aid award which included a ~$3k UC Grant and ~$7k scholarship.</p>

<p>I was also approved for a Cal Grant that totaled $11,124, so in total I was expecting to receive about $21,000 for the 11-12 school year. </p>

<p>Yesterday, I received an email from the UCB Financial Aid office that basically revoked the ~$10k they had offered me. When I called them the lady on the phone didn't really know what was going on, but after being put on hold she told me that a student cannot receive both a Cal Grant and money from the school. They receive the greater amount (in my case, the $11,124 Cal Grant since it was more money than UCB offered me).</p>

<p>Can anyone with experience in this matter chime in? I just want to make sure I'm not being left in the dark in any way.</p>

2

<p>What is your EFC? Mine is 0 and both the UCB & Cal Grant are still listed as Gift Aid for me. You are scaring me now :O!</p>

3

<p>Yes it all depends on your efc. The max need-based gift air you can receive is UC estimated costs (look this up on myfinaid) minus your efc. Schools will always choose to spend state/federal money over the college’s money, so if you are eligible for cal grant it will cancel whatever scholarship UC was offering. It SHOULD add up to be the same amount of aid, if not a little more. You’re saying before it was like 3k + 7k and now it’s just the max cal grant of 11k-ish. That makes sense.</p>

4

<p>pretty sure this is because the UCB grant + the scholarship (like the calgrant) goes purely toward paying tuition. (which is roughly 10k) as far as living expenses go, you’ll probably have to make that up through either loans, or external scholarships. </p>

<p>ironically enough, i should be heading toward UCLA’s SRC (scholarship resource center) today but i haven’t haha /lazy</p>

5

<p>This happened to my son last year. He received a $15,000 Berkeley UG scholarship. He ended up with the $10,000 Cal Grant A and $4,000 Berkeley UG scholarship (rounding on the amounts). This year we made too much to qualify for the Cal Grant so he didn’t receive that. Instead he received a Berkeley UG Grant and a UC Fee grant for a total of $11,000 (rounding on the amount). They use a combination of federal/state money and university money to satisfy the aid amount awarded. That being said, this year might be different. With the state budget situation, financial aid could change. Hope this helps.</p>