I got accepted to UCLA and just received my financial aid award letter. It stated what aid i would receive and I would have to pay about 15K for Housing and Meals. Does that mean the cost of dorming at UCLA? I don’t want to live on campus and prefer to live at home because it’s fairly close. Would that mean that I can cut those 15K and pay less for tuition? Also I received the University Student Health Insurance (USHIP). If I’m already receiving medical insurance from medical, am I obligated to withdraw this aid from UCLA?
As far as I know, you are able to withdraw from insurance.
If you already have medical coverage, you will fill out a form to waive the USHIP coverage and do not have to pay that amount.
They have different calculations for living at home, living on campus and living off-campus. Your offer may change if you live at home rather than in the dorms. You might consider living in the dorms because it gives you the full “college experience”. As for the insurance, if it is a separate line on your financial aid offer, if you decline SHIP, you don’t get the money. At least that was our experience.
may I ask what is SHIP? So does it mean the line of the grant that list ‘UC Grant to purchase USHIP’ will go away if I have my own insurance?
If you opt out of the school health insurance (SHIP or USHIP), because you have your own insurance, the grant to purchase USHIP will go away.
So if you got the grant to purchase uship, if you opt out you will loose the grant. So it really makes no difference financially for you if you keep it or leave it. However, in my opinion the uship insurance is much better than medical. So if you have that grant and don’t plan on your financial situation changing, I would take this over medical. But of course look into this.
As far as if you would be officially obligated to cancel one of your insurances, I assume so. Plus there’s really no point in having both. But you can call ucla financial aid and ask.
Also like a previous person said, be careful of just living off campus, as financial aid gives you different amounts of aid depending on if you live on or off campus. If you google “financial aid calculator UCLA” you can find a quick calculator where you put your basic financial situation, and it gives a pretty good estimate of what UCLA would actually give you. At the very least it has an option to select your type of housing, and you can see how much more or less aid they would give you if you lived on or off campus.
You should look at where you declared you were going to live on your fafsa. If you put on the fafsa that you will be living at home, then you’re fine and will not get financial aid to live on campus anyway. If you decide you want to live on campus but did not declare it on fafsa, tell financial aid office ASAP.
Our kids have our insurance and USHIP. They use ours when they are home and if needed use SHIP when they are at school. No one has ever suggested, nor is it a requirement, to cancel your regular insurance.
I have both and love it. USHIP is great for when you’re on campus and going to the ashe center (health center) for you get discounts on prescriptions and can pick them up from there pretty easily too. Also great if you were glasses or contacts because you get $240 credit for glasses and contacts ($120 for each) if you buy from them.