<p>Those COA figures often come into play as maximums for receiving awards and aid, but are not what are given out by the university itself. For some kids, it’s expensive commuting because there is no public transportation available to the school, and no one in the family can give the student a ride, and the student doesn’t know anyone to car pool with. In such situations, even a low cost community college is going to be a major expense, if a car, insurance, maintenance, gasoline is taken into account. I had mentioned before that my hair dresser was really having a hard time, as she had two kids in community college and when they could not car pool, do to the one moving on to a 4 year school, still commuting, It meant yet another car, and that was even after a lot of issues with the one car and two students, as they both worked and went to school. </p>
<p>My son has friends commuting to NYC for college, and with public transportation, it still costs them $400 a month as they have to drive to the train station, pay for parking there, monthly train pass, and monthly NYC mass transit pass. They likely do not pack food for the day either which means they may often eat out (yeah, I know they do) and that’s another $5-20 a day easily. Packing meals from home seems to be a lost art these days.</p>
<p>I suspect some of the numbers run high so that the kids can get as much PELL and state money as possible each year, since it’s often a “use 'em or loose 'em” situation there. For PELL, for example, if your COA is not such to use the entire award, you don’t get to take it later. It’s given out by term, not by dollar amount used. So for those who are low income and qualify for that kind of aid, there is incentive to give as much leeway to get the max aid they can get. Here in NY getting fin aid from the state schools themselves for anything other than tuition and fees is not guaranteed and not likely, so what the COA isn’t going to matter for them. They tend guarantee to meet the tuition fees cost fully, but not the other expenses. If the student can get money not from the school coffers for that, good for them. How CA schools do this in terms of aid, I don’t know.</p>