No, they will not rescind for not taking an AP test and it should not be an issue as long as you notify them you are not taking an AP exam if it was listed on your original application.
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My son is a junior at Cal now and he didn’t take an expected AP exam. He reported it to them and it was a non-issue.
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It’s official! We have a golden bear in the house! My DS committed this week to college of engineering as a mechanical engineer. Very excited for him and happy to see this wild ride come to a positive end. I’ve posted his stats before but will repost here shortly. Go Bears!
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Congrats! He will have a great time and will get to enjoy the new engineering building starting next year.
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It looks like the current plan shows a planned completion of Mar 10, 2025.
Construction update - Berkeley Engineering
Between that and the new College of Computing, Data Science, and Society building (The Gateway (berkeley.edu)) to be completed the following year, it’s an exciting time to be joining the Engineering & CS community.
I compared my daughter’s Cal package with UCLA, UCSD, and UCD (I didn’t check UCI). UCD was cheapest overall with Cal second. She has committed to Cal.
I did notice that her SAI went up by ~50% from the original number that we were given. We didn’t make any changes and got no notifications about the change. That does make things a bit harder with two in college. But the original value was lower than we had expected.
FAFSA used to give a break to families with two or more children in college at a time. That’s gone now so that is why you have a change in the SAI.
We got the SAI numbers from submitting the FAFSA this year. Then we noticed our contributions where 50% higher when we checked the aid. So, we went back to FAFSA and discovered the SAI numbers had increased compared to their original values (verified with their email).
I haven’t heard that they had wrongly included a reduction based on having two students within this year’s FAFSA submission. However, I know that there were errors in their formula that were corrected later. So that may have been the reason.
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Is anyone else still waiting on financial aid from Cal? My son has still not received anything.
Have you checked CalCentral? The award letter has been there for a few weeks now.
Hi Gumbymom or tamagotchi,
As an incoming freshman, is there a limit to the number of community college credits/units a freshman student can have? Does taking too many community college courses add to and negatively affect the unit cap limits ( Berkeley has a unit ceiling of 130. If there are transferrable units from cc, will that bring the unit ceiling above the 130 unit? I don’t quite understand the implications of the unit ceiling at 130. Thank you in advance.
@tamagotchi beat me to the answer.
Which college is your student admitted to?
If it’s L&S (since you mentioned the unit ceiling), the rules are here: Unit Ceiling and Semester Limit | L&S Advising
No. “College credit earned before you graduated high school, including college exam credit (AP/IB/etc), will not be counted toward your unit ceiling.”
Hello,
Yes, in L&S.
So "college credits earned AFTER high school graduation but before entering Berkeley will be counted toward unit ceiling?
Thanks again!
You can scroll down on that page to “How transfer credit affects time limits” for more info on how transfer credit affects the semester limit and unit ceiling:
If, while on a break from Cal, you take classes at another institution during a Fall or Spring semester, these semesters will count toward your semester limit. So if you took two semesters at Berkeley, withdrew, then took one semester at a community college, when you return to Berkeley, you will have used three of your semesters toward your semester limit.
Depending on when you earned transfer credit, it is possible this could be deductible from your unit ceiling. Meet with an L&S College Adviser if you would like to discuss taking transfer coursework but have concerns about the impact to your allowed time.
I am not 100% sure about summer courses taken during the summer between HS and college, but I think this would be counted against the unit ceiling.
Keep in mind that as long as the student stays within the semester limit (8 semesters for an incoming freshman), they can take as many units as they want. The unit ceiling only comes into play if the student needs to go over the semester limit.
Any experience or thoughts on the medical care? My daughter has financial aid that covers the medical care offered by Cal, however, she will also be covered under my medical care. Do we wave the Cal medical care? If we do I assume we lose the financial aid amount dedicated to the Cal medical? Should we keep both? What do most people usually?
Our family chooses to waive SHIP, but we do not receive financial aid, so I’m not sure about that part of your question; someone else will need to weigh in on that!
Note that students can still use the UHS even if they waive SHIP. Here is a fee schedule to give you an idea of the cost of services: https://uhs.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/uhsfees.pdf
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If you waive the UC SHIP, then you will lose the FA associated with the cost of that insurance.
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Hi - I don’t have experience with this at Berkeley, but with my out of state kiddo to college in PA, we opted into the college insurance and kept her on our own as well. She has some medical issues, so that has been helpful as our CA ins does not work well in PA and the college ins doesn’t work well in CA, so we felt we had no choice.
Are you in-state? If the SHIP is covered by fin aid, what’s the downside of waiving it?
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Is the FinAid specific to UC SHIP? Does she have other aid or grants or scholarships that UCB will know about?
I had an experience with a student I work with at another UC. They opted in to UC SHIP since it was specifically covered by a Health Grant line item. But when an outside scholarship came into the UC office, UC dropped the Health Grant to keep the total aid package about the same. In the end, the student had to scramble to waive SHIP and provide proof of other coverage after the deadline, or otherwise would have been on the hook to pay SHIP out of pocket. That was a nerve-racking week.
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