UC Blue and Gold Promise

turtlerock
Sat, 07 Apr 2012 01:57:12 +0000

Charlie87star:

So according to the UC website the blue and gold promise applies to all of those who make less than $80,000/year and are CA residents and will cover up to full cost or even more for books and such. My question is why I didn’t get it. On my financial aid for UCD it says nothing about blue and gold and I only got $18,000 in scholarships. This is an issue because my family makes less than 50k a year and our EFC was 5k. So why did they give me loans? Don’t I qualify for them giving me all but my EFC?





Charlie87star:

I did not misread the website it does cover more than tuition. I just got this off of the general uc website, the page for the blue and gold opportunity plan
“Students with greater financial need can qualify for even more grant support to help defray other educational expenses (like books, housing, transportation, etc.) In 2010-11, UC provided grant and scholarship assistance averaging $14,514 per student to more than half of undergraduates.”
I know not everyone gets that much, but I wasn’t sure where the cutoff for more past the tuition was.



OP, you’re absolutely right. The website can be vague or misleading to those who are not familiar with school finances, or really not familiar with certain language at all. In short, yes, it seems you may already meet full tuition+ from the 18K scholarships (in fact you do since UC system tuition and fees are ~13k in state). The B&G is supposed to come into play IF your other scholarships and loans combined do not provide enough financial assistance for you to attend a UC you were admitted to. No, it wouldn’t cover every college expense or offer “full ride”, but it would assist in those areas described on the site. I think the key phrase to take away from the site is “qualify for even more grant support” which implies that the student has already received grants, but those end up not covering the full system tuition and fees.

And on a side note from a third party perspective reading the thread chronologically in it’s entirety - IMO, you came off as a bit strong, mom2. I understand there are some students out there (and surely on this forum, and outside of it) that have an air of entitlement where things should be handed to them at minimal financial risk to them. This can usually be determined within the first post or 2 of a new thread with similar questions, but in this case, IMO, it reads like the OP just didn’t understand the website (probably because, like most government websites, it leaves as much ambiguity as possible) or the B&G in general and just wanted to make sure that if they were rightfully eligible for something that they did not receive (possibly in school error), then they just wanted to gain some online opinion on whether it should be brought up or mentioned to the school’s FA office.