I have fabulous news! Thank you all for questioning my post. Because of that, I did call as suggested, and found that he will get that $5, 472 for any of the CSU’s he listed. Once he graduates it will be changed through a school change process.
Also, regarding the middle school scholarship for anyone else who is wondering, CSAC said they get information from the schools at the end of May and then qualifying students will be sent an email in June.
I figured that there was some sort of delay - Congrats ManyX!
This doesn’t always help…We are talking to the school my son wants to go to and they said there’s nothing they can do to help us. Our EFC is $30,000 (after my son takes out $5k in loans)!!! I’d like to know where I’m supposed to get that from, because I can’t find it and I could sure use it now
@ManyXsBlessed that makes sense about the Cal Grant. Great, that is a great chuck to have looks like you just qualified. And like @jbourne said, I also recall someone mentioning the MCS may be just 1,000 or so, if you get it.
@momsav I’m not sure if ‘that’ is cal grant you are wondering or your EFC. Cal Grant has income and asset limits I linked to above. EFC comes from saving for college, current income and debt. If you didn’t plan for college, your student will have to commute from home or look for colleges where he can get a merit scholarship, that is what position a lot of people are in. You have to pick the college you can afford, not the one you want, nothing new there.
“Finding” your EFC if you have assets means mortgaging your house or liquidating the other assets like stocks and bonds.
Just because you don’t normally take 30K out of your HELOC each year to go on a fabulous vacation doesn’t mean that the college doesn’t expect you to do so to send your kid to college.
We planned to do that, got our mortgage down and now it will go back up. And hopefully we will get more aid since we will be whittling our home equity.
I understand, momsav. Any and all help we can get is appreciated. It’s an unbelievable amount of money and we are choosing a state university and it is still overwhelming financially. We haven’t received a financial package yet from the CSU my son has chosen but I’m trying to be as prepared as possible. I just don’t understand it all. Our EFC is 13,990 so I feel for you. We got a nice package from a private school my son was considering and they offered us 12,000 in merit awards for his GPA and then a 10,000 grant of some kind but we still had to turn it down and go with a CSU because it was still going to be 20,000 a year left over for us to cover. We just can’t afford that especially when we have 3 other kiddos to feed and save for. We are lucky in that our son really had his heart set on the most affordable school, anyway.
@ManyXsblessed You are going to be paying the cost of tuition fees, books transportation less the Cal Grant. That’s all you get for CSUs, except Pell. Your son can get a student loan for up to 5,500 for freshman year.
It is my understanding that the Middle Class Scholarship is for those who dont’t receive any other grants. CSUs are not known to give generous financial aid. When our EFC was $15000 we didn’t receive anything from Cal Poly other than loans. The year after my husband lost his job our EFC was $4700 and we received a $6000 grant from Cal Poly. We did not receive a Cal Grant although we were under the income and asset limitations. I’m not sure why we didn’t but our account on the website said we were eligible but that it wasn’t awarded. With that high an EFC and your Cal Grant you won’t get any more grant money just a subsidized loan. Cal Poly covers approximately 58% of your need. The other CSUs are probably similar.
We have another child at UC Davis. For the past three years they have covered 100% of our need with grants, students contribution and loans making it less expensive than Cal Poly. Did he apply to any UCs?
No, he did not. All along he wanted to go to CSUMB and Fresno State as a back up (since we live closer to it). Cal Poly was just a crazy “what if I get accepted!” and it’s looking he didn’t. I tried to encourage him to apply to the UC’s and so did teachers but he had his mind made up.
That’s a bit unfortunate because they can give more aid. Your cal grant would have been 12,xxx and they have university grants available for room/board, not that you would necessarily have got it, you have to apply to see.
That’s good to know. Our next son will be graduating in 2 years.
@momsav What is “this”??? What are you referring to?
but some kids, like my son may need to. My son has asperger's syndrome and the school he wants to go to has a block program (one class at a time). The school is $46k/yr. All his doctors and counselors think it would be the best school for him, but we aren't able to get a loan and he's barely getting anything from the school.
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Your son does not “need to”. There are many, many, many kids with Asperger’s and they’re all not going to some pricey college.
HIs doctors and counselors aren’t paying the bills, so you don’t have to take their advice. It may be “ideal” for him to go to such a school, but if the money isn’t there, it’s not happening.
Many students who are on the spectrum attend “regular universities.” Some commute from home to a local CC, so go to univs that have programs for those on the spectrum.
Surely his doctors and counselors don’t intend for you to take on significant debt …and as you’ve said, you can’t do that anyway. So, once those folks know that particular school is out of the question, they’ll work with what the situation actually is.
Money isn’t going to fall from a tree. So, find Plan B.
Manyxsblessed. Same-ish situation here, in an attempt to figure this out myself, I noticed you got 5k for poly, but not csumb. We were looking at Same schools, and the only thing that I can think of is that you may be right on the line as we are, but poly is about 5k higher in cost of attendance, so maybe that is why you got that and nothing for Monterey. Still am also looking for infor on the MCs too. Not sure why they have the 150 limit, but we don’t see any help either.
no, she already explained that the cal grant was just assigned to one college. As soon as they select the final CSU, the cal grant can be assigned to that one, so she will get it.
Let’s throw in a little more confusion to make it fun. Son received a disqualification email Friday after all of that. I will be calling today.
OK-so I just called CSAC again and told them we received a disqualification letter after changing our school from Cal Poly to CSUMB on the webgrants4students site. She said that is why we are now disqualified. That it IS because CSUMB is cheaper and that they look at cost of tuition plus $1,500. We now do not qualify. When I talked to a different person the other day he told me that it would just be switched over. Guess he was wrong since she said we now do not qualify for financial reasons. Bummer, we’ll survive but to think you are getting that help and then to lose it is hard to swallow. People are in more difficult situations so I’m not too upset. I am still hopeful for a little help from MCS, anything helps a lot!
Look at the link that I put in that post and tell me what you think. Anyway, to be more precise based on what that link shows: Pell + EFC cannot exceed COA.
Not true. Pell + EFC can indeed exceed COA, but because the Pell schedule is adjusted for very low-cost schools, the fact that the Pell may be adjusted downward may appear to be due to Pell+EFC>COA when indeed it’s just because the Pell payment is lower for a very low-cost school than it is for a higher-cost school at the same EFC. If a student at a school with a reduced Pell payment schedule were to have a non-need-based scholarship, then Pell+EFC could exceed COA … and the student would still get the full Pell.
So… in english are you saying that the person I talked to today at CSAC was wrong?
I say “in english” because I’m totally overwhelmed by all this financial aid wording/abbreviations. Brand new to all of this.