UCB financial aid offer

undecided
Sun, 10 May 2009 00:12:43 +0000

This question has been asked several times already.

There is no real deadline on when you accept your financial aid except that it be in the award year – in other words, accept your 2009-2010 funds before June 30, 2010 (don’t know if that’s the cut-off, but you get the gist).

If you want the money disbursed to you in time for classes, I recommend accepting 2-3 weeks before the beginning of the semester.

Caution: grant and scholarship monies CAN be time sensitive. The way they deal out Cal Grants and scholarships means that they MAY look at what’s unclaimed and divide the resources up amongst other students they wish to offer aid to (repackaging, late SIR, etc.). You can accept your financial aid whenever, but they can also change your financial aid offer whenever, so be wary of that.

Loans are pretty safe to wait on, though I recommend accepting ALL of what you will be using rather than part. Accepting part of your loan and then wanting to accept another part of it later entails going into the office in person, telling them, signing a form, waiting up to 4 weeks, etc.

Why does everyone want to wait on this, anyway?