Too good to believe?

Paying for College
1

<p>I was accepted into UIC for 09 Fall Semester. I applied for FAFSA, and received an award letter that basically said I received all the grants needed to pay off my first year at UIC. The letter states that </p>

<p>" Your financial aid package is estimated because the University of Illinois Board of Trustees has not yet announced tuition and fees for the 2009-2010 academic year. For your convenience, all gift aid funds (grants, scholarships and/or waivers) have been accepted for you. Less than 12 hour enrollment will be evaluated after the add/drop period each term, and may result in a reduction or cancellation of awards."</p>

<p>I am not 100% sure what this means. Do I have an entire payed off through grants? Or what?</p>

2

<p>You have to look at the numbers. Is everything covered by grants? </p>

<p>All that sentence you quoted says is that you won’t officially have to accept your grant aid because they already did that for you (because who would decline that?). With loans, you have the option to accept or decline the loan, so they’re not going to do that for you.</p>

3

<p>UIC hasn’t decided its tuition, yet. They will not send out finalized financial letters until that is done.
UIC assumes you want all the free money, and automatically approves it.</p>

4

<p>COA is 20,000 in-state, and 27,300 out of state (estimated 09/10). Did they pony up grants for that full amount?</p>

<p>If not, the difference is what you’ll have to come up with.</p>