I currently have been accepted to UC Santa Cruz, CSU Long Beach, Cal Poly Pomona, and San Jose State University for Electrical Engineering. All the tuition and costs are covered except for room and board. Room and Board costs a lot of money and would put me in debt. Is there a way to offset the costs or lower it by a lot(I know working is one)? Or should I go to community college and then transfer, or is it bad and risky considering TAG is not an option for impacted majors? Please help! Thanks in advance 
Have you visted all the campuses? Why go to a CC since you have a choice of 4 very good schools? Since all the costs are the same, choose the school environment you like best. I would consider either CSULB or CPP as my top choices due to their excellent engineering programs. You can TAG for all of the following schools for EE: UCM/UCR/UCSC/UCD/UCI.
Compare the EE curriculum at each school and see if there any significant differences. Good Luck and make your decision in the next few hours…
@GoldenEggs If you are not required to live on campus as a Freshman, you could explore living off campus, sharing an apartment with a few other students and buying/fixing your own food. Many students save a lot of money on room and board with this approach. There may be bulletin boards or Facebook pages or something to help you to connect with other students who are looking for this type of living arrangement.
@Gumbymom How are all the costs the same? CC costs much less due to being able to commute and my financial aid covers everything. Could you please explain? I have visited all them except for CPP and SJSU(only toured it online) and leaning towards UCSC and CSULB. CPP graduation rate seems really bad for some reason. @NorthernMom61 I’m new to exploring off campus, but is there any tips you can give me(websites, etc). I looked at Santa Cruz off-campus housing and I guess it runs about the same, I could be wrong lol.
@GoldenEggs I don’t have any special tips, but the school’s housing office may have ways to explore off campus opportunities and search for roommates. At the school my daughter is going to she has to live on campus as a freshman, but I noticed that there is a link to a service that helps upperclassman link to ways to find apartments/roommates off campus.
I read in your original post that all the tuition costs were covered, so room and board will vary at each campus but they are relatively close in price if living on campus. Yes if you commute, then room/board will be significantly lower than living on campus. You did not state if you can commute to any of your options. If you did not receive any additional FA for room/board, then commute or consider the CC.
CPP has a 4 year graduation pledge: https://www.cpp.edu/~academic-programs/graduation-pledge/
Sorry if I misunderstood the financial aspect of your post.
@Gumbymom Yes, you are correct.Sorry that I misunderstood your post lol. Weird how CPP still has a bad graduation rate of 53% within 6 years and 11% within 4 years. But thanks for your help :). Idk if its just me or something but it says 11:59:59PM May 1st is the final time so I think tomorrow is the last day. @NorthernMom61 Ok thank you
UC Santa Cruz is a notch above the other colleges you’re considering. I encourage you to choose it. As a UC it has stronger students and faculty, an important consideration, and it will have national recognition, important in opening up internship and job opportunities.
Just a note about grad rates. Beware of taking them at face value. Grad rates are typically calculated for first time full time students only. Many of the large universities have a variety of students including many many transfers and non first timers. No non traditional students or transfer students are counted. In fact according to the department of ed data only 54% of students were actually counted in the grad rate numbers. The are other factors at play here don’t be discouraged by the data.
Just a note from a former institional researcher.
@fogcity Are you just saying that because it’s a UC? I don’t know but when I looked at rankings it ranked CSULB as a higher ranking in terms of engineering plus its a lot closer. But if internship and job opportunities are well more opened at UCSC, I’ll take that into strong consideration. @LKnomad Interesting. Does this only apply to certain schools like San Jose State and CPP? UCSD has a strong graduation rate of 86%.
@GoldenEggs The Department of ed requires all schools in the united states to supply data of grad rates but specifically on grade rates for full time first time students. This means that regardless of the type of student, the data is supposed to be the same. This is true for all schools, at all levels, in all states. If you take a look at the college navigator which supplies the data reported to the gov by each school, it will tell you what percent of the population is counted in the grad rate - sort of.
Take a look at this page. You will see your 86% grade rate but if you look above that you will see that only 66% of students would have been considered first time/full time in 2013…BUT the numbers are for students who started their schooling in 2007. If that sounds weird, it is.
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=san+diego&s=all&pg=2&id=110680#retgrad
The college navigator is a nice tool but you have to read the fine print. The numbers here are those reported by the colleges to the federal government. Unfortunatly. the federal government sometimes asks for things that don’t work for all schools and they report things in strange ways. The Common Data Sets are supposed to be the same numbers but they are not regulated by the feds so who knows! That is more of an honor system.
Just an interesting tidbit that many don’t know. Beware of the data. It is bizarre. It is even worse trying to report it as I did for several years.
Now just my .02. I am a CSULB fan do to my current location. Beautiful campus and somewhat commuter so living off campus works as well as living on. Don’t know much about specific departments but Long Beach is really a great place to be. It is just a great city.