Hey Everyone. I have so far gotten accepted into UC Irvine, UC Riverside, and UC Davis for the Fall of 2019. My major is English. I want to become an English teacher or professor one day. I recently have also gotten into Cal State LA but they want me to turn in my SIS by May 1st. They have given me a pretty great financial aid package so that I wouldn’t have to pull out a student loan because their tuition is a bit cheaper in prices and I would not have to worry about housing because it is only a 10 minute drive from my house. However, it has always been a dream of mine to go to a UC. I have been at a community college for 6+ years. I tried calling the Financial Aid Office at UCI to see of how much the prices would be or how much of my package would cover my classes. My EFC is 00000. Sadly, I read that UCI doesn’t give alot of financial aid or students would have to pull 20,000+ dollars in student loans. I am a transfer student so I figured that it wouldn’t be that much because I am only going to be there for a year and half cause I already completed most of my ENGLISH classes at my local community college.
I wanted to ask all of my former Ant Eaters of how was your financial aid opportunities. Did you guys really have to pull out huge loans? How do loans work? Please Help.
UCI should have given you a financial aid package at time of acceptance so did you check for FA package?. UC’s can be more generous than CSU’s since if you are eligible for Federal grants and Cal grants/Blue and Gold Opportunity some of your housing expenses could be covered for UCI. If you are commuting to CSULA, then UCI might not be able to beat those costs.
First find out what UCI is offering and I would take with the financial aid office to go over your package to help you understand what is being offered. As a transfer, the maximum loans amount that you can take out is probably $15K for the next 2 years (federal loans).
I think you need to educate yourself on the federal loans limits and should post in the Financial aid forum: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/
I already tried contacting the UCI financial aid office to go over my package and they said they were not going to send the packages until June.
Have you tried using the Net price calculator for UCI for at least an estimate? What kind of FA package did you get from UCD and UCR? Usually the FA packages between UC’s can be comparable. I would imagine if you plan to live on campus for UCI, that their will be a gap in FA for the housing and you will need to come up some amount to cover the additional expenses.
https://www.ofas.uci.edu/content/calculator.aspx
UC’s offer better financial aid packages than CSU’s, I think.