<p>Without writing an essay? I have a 3.68 GPA </p>
<p>Just for clarity you don’t “get” FAFSA. FAFSA is an application for federal student aid. It is used to determine your “Expected Family Contribution” which determines what federal loans and grants you will qualify for. If you qualify and it’s all income based you may be eligible for a Pell Grant and/or a subsidized or un subsidized Stafford loan. Also understand that “Expected Family Contribution” has little correlation to what you might be expected to pay, it is primarily used to determine federal aid. </p>
<p>I meant to group that with the grant. I understand what fafsa is, I’ve used it for my cc</p>
<p>As a transfer student there is little other opps for aid for a CSU besides a Cal Grant…and Pell if you qualify.</p>
<p>Plus you will get loans. (how much have you borrowed so far?)</p>
<p>What is your EFC? How much are your parents contributing?</p>
<p>No loans for me. I’m going to live at
Home and try to make due with money I made from selling a 1964 impala as well as the pell/cal grant </p>
<p>I can do miraculous things with money. I wear gold rings and spend some days doing absolutely nothing to save money. I can make a little money go really far.</p>
<p>If you are commuting and you are getting a Pell and Cal Grant, then you may not need much more money. If you do, you should get a part-time job…instead of wearing gold rings and doing absolutely nothing. </p>
<p>Seriously, work experience goes a long way. </p>
<p>@mom2collegekids Working at McDonalds is virtually useless. I can get people to vouch for me and claim I did more reasonable work.</p>
<p>First of all, working at McD’s is not the only option out there for college students. Do you think that is the only place where college kids earn money??? There are a million other jobs out there!!!</p>
<p>That said, even working at McD’s gives a person some valuable work experience…and a paycheck. It can help you get the NEXT job. </p>
<p>What do your parents do for a living? where do they work?</p>
<p>@mom2collegekids Minimum wage jobs usually are your best option unless you’re very creative or exceptionally well represented. Most (low tier) jobs are being competed for by people who have been working either for decades who are desperate to pay the bills or people who majored in liberal arts. This isn’t the 1950s. There aren’t lines of employers begging to hire you out of HS. It’s an employers market.</p>
<p>Stop making excuses. There are millions of HS grads working in various jobs across the country: fast food, restaurants, drug stores, retail stores, etc. </p>
<p>Even if they are low-tier/minimum wage, they still provide experience and a paycheck.</p>
<p>What do your parents do for a living?</p>
<p>When you filled out the FAFSA you got an EFC that CSU has in their files for you. After federal and state grants , loans, workstudy, some of which may be at the discretion of the school to dispense (only direct loans and Pell are entitlements), the school might have grant money that it might include in your aid package. Other than outside scholarships, those are the sources of non work money, though work study, also a form of financial aid has a required work component. </p>
<p>I’m glad you can make the money go far, but college does have certain fixed costs that have to be paid with no wiggle room. If your aid is sufficient to get that paid, good for you. You just have the discretionary costs to meet, and those often have a lot of alternatives–get used books, borrow books from prior students of the same course, rent books,etc,. Same with transportation, meals, and other living expenses. </p>
<p>But if you find yourself needing the real suff, the money, that is, finding a job is usually needed, and I see nothing wrong with getting a job at McDonald’s. I knew a woman who owned two MCDs, and many student met their disrcetionary expenses, got work experience working at them. Don’t see my nose going up to that. A lot of those kids have graduated from some fine college programs and are doing quite well now. If you don’t need the money, then you don’t have to work right now, but the time will likely come when you will have to find a job and even miniimum wage is something towards the nut you need to meet. These days even getting one of those jobs, and particularly getting the hours in a week to make it full time are accomplishments.</p>
<p>@mom2collegekids The reason I am so appalled against these McJobs is because I worked at a “McSecurity Firm”. This company was known to hire anything that breaths and both the staff and other employees were known for extreme rule bending. Not a single person in that company was competent. My pay started at $10 an hour but as time went on it actually lowered to $8 an hour and never changed (I worked there 2 years). It was the same pay for everyone so it wasn’t my choice or fault the wage dropped so much. I grew more and more jaded and worked less and less hard and ended it on bad terms. On the other hand my networking skills has gotten me more usable, more useful work experience than that POS job ever got me. Hell. I paid almost half my salary DRIVING to that damn job than I made actually working there. I make almost as much walking DOGS than I did at the security job.
@cptofthehouse I have a pretty hefty sum of money from the sale of the impala and I do make money but having a credit card tab(paying expenses for others and getting paid back later)/walking dogs.</p>
<p>I’m glad that you have great networking skills and you are right that they can lead to a lot of opportunities, including other jobs. I wish those who say they have no way to get to a college or job could take a note or two from you. Bear in mind that pad experiences are not always the case, and one does look for the situation where the benefits exceed the misery. Some times the only benefit is the net money earned and needed to make ends meet.</p>
<p>@cptofthehouse If I must, I will find another McJob. The ONLY thing about the McSecurity Job I liked was, because it was such an incompetent work place, I was able to get away with reading the textbook for hours (until they began demanding more and paying less) on the job. I know that sort of experience will never happen again. But I’d need to find something that doesn’t eat too much time. I have a very low stress threshhold.</p>
<p>Everyone can tell a “bad job” story. The trick is to consider them to be exceptions and find something else.</p>
<p>@mom2collegekids did you graduate in the 1970s or earlier? Most of the people I know are baby boomers(I am quite a bit older than most of the children on here) and from what I hear all you needed to do back then was walk outside and you’d be offered factory/government jobs with livable wages and a lifetime of strong health benefits/pensions. Now you need to be creative just to land menial work. The economy is permanently crippled. It’s not going to ever be as easy as it was.</p>
<p>Oh poppycock. I’m probably old enough to be your grandmother. I was NEVER guaranteed a job. I had to go out and sell myself, just like my own kids had to so. And I WS grateful for any job I was offered…not picky. Money is money, and job experience is job experience…especially when you have very little to offer in terms of expertise and experience.</p>
<p>I think you need to be a lot less picky, and a lot more grateful…in terms of jobs.</p>
<p>@thumper1 perhaps so, but many careers that I remembered as being staples are gone. Milk men… Data Entry Employees, File room workers, trip advisor, drive in theater employees, bowling alley employees, switch board operators, factory workers, and typists are all examples of jobs that are either gone, or dying. What have they been replaced with? Computer programmers/engineers? Oh wait. Those have always existed since ENIAC. There hasn’t been a single new job type that has been created in the last 30 years. Everything that seems new has existed in one form or another.</p>
<p>@DickCheney
You are forgetting that most of us here either have children in college or are recent grads. So, our kids’ have had work experiences that YOU would likely have TODAY.</p>