How to Use CARS for Berkeley Textbooks?

Colleges & Universities University of California - Berkeley
1

<p>I’m just looking at my textbooks for Chem 1A and Math 1A and I went through the whole shopping cart thing at the Cal Student Store website, just to realize that I had to use my own credit card to pay for my textbooks.</p>

<p>I was awarded finaid for the fall and I want to use my CARS account to pay for my textbooks and materials. Is this possible and how do I do this?</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

2

<p>If you have enough left over then they will give you a refund. If you set up your EFT than they will deposit the refund in your banking account. The thing is, however, that they first take out money to pay for registration, housing, and other “school business” and than they give you your refund so don’t expect it for a while.</p>

3

<p>Oh and it is a bit random in that I got a refund in February for spring semester and than another one in the middle of June.</p>

4

<p>…I’m confused.</p>

<p>I should clarify my problem:</p>

<h1>1) I am an incoming freshman.</h1>

<h1>2) I want to purchase books for Fall 09 (chem 1a pkg, math 1a custom book)</h1>

<h1>3) I don’t want to use a personal credit card to pay, but I want to charge the books to my school account for billing later (which my finaid will take care of).</h1>

<p>How do I do the above?</p>

5

<p>The only way you can directly pay for your textbooks with financial aid money is to wait for a refund and then use that money to pay for your books. A refund is simply all the money left over from the financial aid you were allotted. The school automatically uses up your financial aid money to pay for various things, and then if there’s any left over money, they give it back to you directly and you can then spend it on what you want.</p>

<p>However, refunds typically aren’t given until well into the semester, so what this means is you will have to end up paying for your books with your credit card or cash for now, and if indeed you do have leftover money, you can use that “refunded” money to “pay” for those books you bought at the beginning of the semester.</p>

6

<p>ooooh that makes a lot more sense. thank you for answering!</p>