<p>I did not receive any aid because our EFC was over the cost of attendance at Cal, but now my mother lost her job, reducing the family income by almost half. We filed a parent contribution appeal, but have not heard anything yet. Has anyone gone through this process? If so, how long did it take, and did you have a successful result?</p>
<p>Just give them a call and inquire about your status.</p>
<p>But, in general, you should understand that finaid officers will assume that your mother can/will find a job eventually, thus, they just don’t zero out her income for the purposes of finaid.</p>
<p>Thanks for your response. I did call and was told it’s in line for processing, but I’m specifically wondering if anyone call tell me how long their appeal took to process, and if it was successful. </p>
<p>Also, I wonder if the financial aid officer will consider that, yes, although my mother will hopefully get another job soon, my family is out six months of her salary this year, and that money is more than our EFC. Does that make sense?</p>
<p>We went through the same process a couple of years ago with UCB. Unfortunately, it took a long time, almost about the time the quarter had started. Usually, they will process all the regular financial aid applicants first. Also, don’t expect for them to make up for the entire loss of income. They might give you more in loans or work study. In other words, don’t get your hopes high. We were very disappointed with the outcome.</p>
<p>My mother has recently been laid off too. I really want to go to UC Berkeley but I’m not sure if my family can afford it. So I’m thinking about giving them a call and asking them what I can do. My parents want to see if they can put all the parent loan into my work-study or student loan so that there isn’t anything to worry about for now.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if this could work?</p>
<p>
I don’t know what you are asking. Work study is you working a job on campus, earning money. It may or may not be part of the FA you are offered. By student loan I guess you mean Stafford Loan? That would be offered to you as a student, and is capped at approx $5.5K. If you are low income then part of that total would be subsidized so you don’t pay interest on that portion of the loan while you are in college.</p>
<p>No, you can’t just change a big Plus loan into a student loan. </p>
<p>Your parents can defer their payments of a Plus loan until later, but they will be accumulating interest the whole time.</p>