<p>I just received my Financial Aid award letter and found that all I’ve been offered are loans? Could it be that I did something wrong with my FAFSA? I’m pretty sure that my family is not wealthy enough to pay college in its entirety. My friend who lives in another state is given grants that are enough to pay for everything and I’m positive that they are wealthier than we are. My EFC is 08301. I don’t know if that’s good or bad but I would like to know if there’s something wrong with my FAFSA or is my EFC ties in with the reason why I’m not awarded any grants.</p>
<p>*My friend who lives in another state is given grants that are enough to pay for everything and I’m positive that they are wealthier than we are. My EFC is 08301. *</p>
<p>Your EFC is too high for federal grants. Your EFC hasd to be under 5000 (or so) to get a fed grant.</p>
<p>What state do you live in? You may be in a state that doesn’t give state grants. And, your college may not have its own grants to give.</p>
<p>It’s not unusual for students whose EFCs are beyond the fed grant levels to ONLY get loans. </p>
<p>How much are the schools that you applied to? </p>
<p>How much can your family pay? </p>
<p>Your friend may be in a state that gives state grants…what state is he in?</p>
<p>Your friend may have a sibling in college which would reduce his EFC.</p>
<p>Your friend may be going to a college that has its own grants to give.</p>
<p>Is it rare for college students to not receive any time of help from the government at all or am I a minority?</p>
<p>No… the majority of students will not receive grants from the federal government because their EFC is too high. You have to have a very low EFC (as mom2 said- under 5k-ish) in order to qualify. You do not, therefore no grants. </p>
<p>The majority of help is going to come from your college. The federal government’s aid only goes to very low income students.</p>
<p>I was looking at my SAR to see if there were any mistakes that could have contributed to my award information. I noticed that under “Type of Degree/Certificate” I had “Other” instead of “ASSOCIATE DEGREE (GENERAL EDUCATION/TRANSFER PROGRAM)” Would this have any significant effect to my FAFSA?</p>
<p>You could make the change, however it is not going to have any effect on your financial aid. I see from your posts that you attend community college in California even though you live in Hawaii. Unfortunately, you are probably paying an enormous amount to attend this school as an out of state student. In addition, you are not eligible for California state aid (and most likely never will be as long as your parents live in Hawaii). At the community college level, they simply do not have any institutional aid to give. Your EFC is too high that you would be elligible for pell (federal grants).</p>
<p>Have you considered doing your community college credits in Hawaii and then transferring to a 4 year college where you could be eligible for need based aid? Right now, the path that you are on is definitely not the most affordable option for your family.</p>
<p>Most students do NOT get grants from the gov’t. </p>
<p>Most schools do not have a lot of grants to give…especially if you’re an OOS student attending a public school.</p>
<p>WHY are you going to school in Calif? Is this your first semester?</p>
<p>If this is your first semester in college, then next year will be WORSE. If you didn’t attend college in the Fall, then you were awarded a full Stafford loan for ONE semester. Next year, your loan will get split in half for each semester…so you’ll have less money for each semester.</p>
<p>What is your situation? Did you come to Calif and start school without knowing what your aid would be?</p>
<p>If your friend is a Calif resident, then she might have qualified for state aid. You wouldn’t qualify for state aid because you’re not a Calif resident. I think you also have to have gone to high school in Calif to qualify for state aid as well. </p>
<p>Your “type of degree” error can be changed, but it won’t change your award.</p>
<p>Most states have some sort of a grant program, but that is not offered to out of state students and most states only offer it to their students at in state universities.</p>
<p>You might read the various residency pages in CA (each school has their own rules) and see if you can establish residency in California, IF you take time off from school and work to support yourself. If you think it it so very important to attend school in CA. That could take you a year or two off from school.</p>
<p>Does the state of Calif require that students attend High School in Calif in order to qualify for state aid (Cal Grants, etc)? If so, then trying to establish residency at this point wouldn’t work. </p>
<p>Also, as long as she’s under 24, it’s much harder to establish residency away from her parents’ state.</p>
<p>If this student hasn’t started school yet, then perhaps she needs to go to school in Hawaii. It sounds like this student was misled by her friend’s situation - which sounds like an instate student who got great aid - so this student thought she’d get the great aid as well. </p>
<p>Glam…even if your family was lower income, gov’ts still aren’t going to give you aid to cover OOS costs. Going OOS is a luxury…tax dollars aren’t for that.</p>
<p>My son’s EFC is 8,000+ and we can only get student loans. The community college my son is attending takes grants but does not take students loans, so we are having to pay for everything out of pocket. I don’t feel good about it, especially when we know so many other kids that went to high school with my son are brandishing around their pell grant “Visas” that paid for their tuition, books plus extra cash to spend…and we are “poorer” than them. So our middle class family (dad works a manual labor job and I’m an office worker) we are resolved to tightening our belts even more to come up with three more monthly installments of $300 thru the end of the Spring Semester…worse, we don’t have books for his classes yet, and I’ve spent hours into this morning looking for the cheapest place to rent them. Is Chegg the least expensive place to rent books? Is there a secret to getting in on the grants when I do his Fafsa? We’re in Texas. The community college is in our district. Just feeling like we’re doing things the hard (most costly) way, and there’s a secret everyone else knows they’re not telling us.</p>
<p>The Pell grant can only be awarded to those with very low EFC’s (IIRC, the cutoff is currently under $5300) so your income or assets are pushing your EFC higher than the limit. You can work through the EFC Formula Guide available online to get a better understanding of how it’s calculated.</p>
<p>State grant programs often have different guidelines so you might want to make sure he has filled out whatever TX requires. Some CC’s don’t participate in the federal student loan program but it seems odd that they wouldn’t certify a student for a private student loan. Have you asked the CC about that?</p>
<p>My kids have used Chegg and their college bookstore to rent. Chegg usually is cheap with coupon codes available online, cash back through ebates/Mr. Rebates, free shipping back, etc. Amazon now offers a buyback program that’s decent, especially combined with Amazon Student Prime membership. I’ve noticed that our local Craigslist often has book ads for the local CC so that may be a good option if there are books he’d like to keep…at least he can negotiate the price there.</p>