Also, update on Carleton! They got rid of my parents’ contribution (2k), so I only have the loans now!! 0 COA minus grants/loans!
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That’s fantastic news!! So happy for you!
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If you live at home and commute then you would have tuition and student fees covered for the UC’s but there is still the cost of transportation, books, personal expenses and Student Health insurance that would need to be covered. Did you post the complete breakout of your FA packages for the UC’s? If low income, they usually give you a grant to cover the Health insurance fee also.
I also saw CPP’s FA package and you should be eligible for a Cal Grant that is not listed. I only saw Federal aid listed for the CPP package.
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If you were my child I would strongly be urging you to go to Carleton!
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Great news! And hopefully it’s double the improvement, because your twin should qualify for the same adjustment, right?
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I would also love for you to have the study away experience Carleton would give you, but you must do what is right for you and offers you the best opportunity for the future you want for yourself.
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Also, there is one more thing you should know.
All colleges will require that you have health insurance which will cover you while you are a student. Many will allow you to use your family’s insurance policy if it will cover you in the area where the college is located (some insurance will, some will not).
If you don’t have insurance that the college says is comprehensive enough, they will require you to purchase their insurance. That can get very expensive.
For one of my kids, the charge was about $2,000 per year. For the other, the charge was about $4,000 a year. Some colleges will provide an additional grant to cover this amount.
Since money is a major factor with your and your brother’s college choice, I recommend that you call the financial aid offices of your top choices to ask how they handle health insurance. The questions you want to ask is if your current policy would be acceptable. if it is not, ask how much is the insurance that they will require you to have, and will they provide a grant to cover that additional cost.
Most colleges ALSO charge a student health fee which entitles you to use the college health clinic. This is different from the insurance and is usually required. You can ask how much that is and if it is included in the financial aid package that you already received. If it is not, you can ask if there is an additional grant to cover that.
These fees and charges will not be unique to Carlton – as far as I know, they are at all US colleges and universities. So it may be helpful to find out what they are at Carlton, CPP, UCR and UCI at the least.
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Here’s my CPP aid, I’m assuming it’ll be ~1.5k if I live at home, which is what my parents are planning on anyways. I’m on the Amherst & UCI WL. I still have no idea what I want to do or any clue of where I want to go and it’s kind of nerve-wracking.
Given your family situation, cost will be your driving factor. In addition to the health insurance component, even if you get into Amherst off the WL, you will still need to afford the transportation to/from school, even considering they should meet full need. The transportation applies to Carleton as well. Please calculate that into your thinking about your choice.
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@acidghost Have you decided on CPP because you prefer it over Carlton, or because you think it will cost less?
If it’s the former – that’s great. If it’s the latter, I would suggest that CPP may actually cost more than Carlton when you factor in the cost of paying for your food, parking passes, gasoline costs, car insurance (can be VERY expensive in SoCal for a young person), perhaps even your own car if needed, etc. for a commuter student. (As an exercise, you really should do the math as to how much it costs to feed yourself for 9 months a year. For example, at $10 a day, it’s $2,700. Maybe you spend less per day, but I know food in SoCal is quite expensive. Maybe you spend more. I just encourage you to do the math.
And I can’t imagine your parents will want to drive you to and from campus every day for four years – you may be staying late for clubs or activities, etc. Maybe there is a local bus? Or price out the cost of ubers vis a vis your having access to a car – and again, insurance is insanely expensive from what we have found (also SoCal with young drivers in the house).
I had posted earlier that I found very inexpensive plane tickets to Minnesota for a day that would work for arrival for your first semester, so hopefully travel costs for Carlton won’t be unmanageable.
And I found evidence on the websites of both Carlton and Amherst that they appear to have additional grants that can be used to offset the cost of mandatory health insurance, if that becomes necessary.
Health Insurance – Student Resource Guide – Carleton College
Financial Aid Enhancements | Forms & Helpful Links | Amherst College
Also, when I do the math from what you posted above from CPP, it looks to me like it will cost you $3,175, (19,545 - 16,370) although that includes an allowance of $5,342 for books, transportation and other educational costs which you might not actually incur and thus would not have to pay – so probably considerably less than $3,175. And then they also offer you loans and work-study to help pay your costs. So it’s complicated.
Again, if you prefer CPP – that’s great. But if you don’t, then please set up a spreadsheet with actual costs, and actual grants, loans and work-study amounts so that you can make an informed comparison. (And you should include the family costs to having you stay home that I mentioned above re: food and car expenses that you won’t have at Carlton or Amherst or any residential college where you live in a dorm and are on meal plan, as that is rolled into the cost of attendance for which you are being given grants).
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Nice work!
I probably won’t be able to look at this in detail until tomorrow, but it’s a great start!
In the meantime, you probably want to allocate only 1/4 of the car’s cost to each calendar year, so your 6,000 would drop to 1,500 per year. Did you check with your family what is a reasonable food budget that they spend on you per day or per month? (And it is likely that you will be eating your lunches and some dinners at the CPP dining halls, which has restaurants like Panda Express on campus, unless you plan to bring your lunch and dinner with you from home. So you may want to account for those expenditures, which may increase the food budget for CPP. You can of course always eat out at Carlton which would be an added expense, but their meal plan should cover 3 meals a day every day that school is in session, so that would be an “extra”, not a requirement. One of my kids has eaten almost every meal in the dining hall for their entire time at college, so it’s definitely do-able!)
And I think you can remove the 2,707 for Carlton’s health insurance, because I think they will give you an additional grant to cover it. You can always call them to ask. (My son’s college does that, and the link I posted upthread indicates that Carlton will do so as well. But always best to check!).
I’ll look more closely tomorrow and get back to you then. And again – nice work!
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Also, here is the cost for a parking pass at CPP. It looks like it will run you about $462 a year. I was a commuter grad student there and I have to say, finding parking was really stressful as the lots were always full. But I only took late afternoon classes, so that may be a time-of-day issue.
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Good catch, thank you!
You’re welcome!
(I loved my time at CPP, but the parking–grrr! I could spend up to 30 minutes looking for a space. But again, I was arriving for late afternoon/evening classes only so I would think / hope things would be easier in the morning).
And I am NOT trying to dissuade you from CPP if that’s where you want to go for the engineering degree or for other reasons. I’m just wanting you to make sure you are comparing apples to apples when assessing the finances, since it had seemed from your earlier posts that you were hoping for a residential college experience but the costs might keep you from it. I got a great education at CPP as a grad student.
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I do want the residential college experience, I’m also kind of worried about the social life and most importantly getting to know my professors and having help. I hope since you’re an alum, I could get some perspective. I worry that moving from an online school to CPP would make me struggle academically. I am used to independently studying, I just don’t think I can “study” at the correct level I should be for college, and being able to reach my professors is very important to me. However, one big plus I see at Pomona is the hands-on experience, and their aerospace recruiting seems very very strong. I’m really worried about struggling academically at both of these places, but moreso CPP.
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At all colleges, faculty will have office hours each week where they are available to meet with students to help them understand the material better or to answer questions. Students are ENCOURAGED to go to these office hours, but many don’t. My CPP advisor often said that she was being paid to sit there and wait for the students – she wanted them to arrive. That resource will be available to you wherever you go. And there are usually student resource centers etc to help with tutoring and study habits. You seem very resourceful – I am confident you will adapt!
I’m sure that both colleges have resources for students like yourself. If you search for FGLI (first-generation low-income) resources at both campuses, you can see what they offer. (I am making the assumption that you are FGLI but even if you aren’t you will at least see how the colleges differ – or not-- in what they offer to those who are).
Many colleges also offer first-year advisors to help all students get acclimated. You should see what CPP and Carlton each offer in that regard.
At CPP, it did seem that a large number of undergrads were commuter students and that can make it harder to make friends, but I also saw lots and lots of students hanging out together and looking like they were having fun. And I was a working parent taking courses in the evening and I made several friends at CPP among my classmates (also working parents) – so it’s definitely doable.
But the engineering issue is a real one. If that’s what you want, you won’t be able to get it at Carlton unless you are interested in their 3-2 engineering program. If you are, then you should reach out to them and ask about financial aid, etc for all 5 years.
About the Program – 3-2 Engineering Program – Carleton College
So I was wondering if I could do this and someone let me know if it’s stupid? I see on the FSA website you can cancel some/all of the loan within 120 days. My idea is:
Tuition without direct costs is 90,462. If I remove grants/scholarships, it’ll be 4,473. For the winter term payment on Dec 15, I think it would be 1,491. Could I use my work-study money of 1060 to pay the unsubsidized loan off (or just cancel the loan and pay with work-study instead after fall term dues?) Obviously this would be a very tight budget to work on, but I am thinking of using work-study to pay and having savings for a summer job for the indirect.
It might be best to call the financial aid office and ask this question, or ask if they could put you on a payment plan that would allow you to use your work study money to pay tuition. I think they will respect that you would like to be loan free.
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I agree you should call the FA dept and talk about work study options. Some points:
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Your job at college technically doesn’t have to be a work study job. I would ask if a work study job guaranteed/how competitive is it to get one? What is the pay range? At some schools work study jobs are limited/there aren’t many options…and there may be non-work study jobs that suit you better. For example, many work study jobs might be in food service. But, perhaps better to find a work study/non-work study job where you can study at the same time you are working, for example, checking people in at the library or the gym. Finally, at some schools, you can make more money at an off campus job. I’m not sure how many jobs might be in walking distance from Carleton, or an easy bus ride, but something to look into. I know students who babysit in the local towns for $20/hour, to take one example.
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I expect the $3180 they show is gross pay. Fed and state taxes will come out of each check. So, always be working with cash in hand when making a budget. Ask the school the options to either apply the money you earn to your account, or take the cash.
In the big picture, I wouldn’t worry much about taking out the student loans (even if med school is in the future.) The limits are a reasonable amount, and are similar to say, a car payment. The loans can be a way so you don’t have to have such a tight budget, can afford books and other costs more easily. You can actually take out $5.5K in loans the first year, so another $1K unsubsidized, if you wanted to (I am not suggesting that you should take out loans at all or more in loans, but just sharing info.)
Do you have a job lined up this summer? That could allow you to not take loans this upcoming year.
@kelsmom can you walk thru considerations for OP and the mechanics of potentially taking the loan/cancelling it/paying it off right way?