ESS 802: Financial aid

Laura Vogt:
Hello and welcome to the Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. My name is Laura Vogt. I’m the associate director for marketing and communications for the College of Engineering and your podcast host. Every year I make sure to include a podcast about financial aid, and this year we’re lucky to have Joseph Sell the assistant director from the Financial Aid and Scholarships office here with us again. Hi Joe, welcome to the podcast.

Joseph Sell:
Hey Laura. Good morning, so glad to be back again.

Laura Vogt:
Can you introduce yourself and tell us more about what your role is at UC Berkeley?

Joseph Sell:
Absolutely. My name is Joe Sell. I use he/him pronouns. I’m an assistant director in the Financial Aid and Scholarships office, specifically in our counseling unit. I’ve been working at Berkeley for about nine years. Our office supports students with all types of financial aid questions they have. We offer advising, we handle all of the processing of forms, appeals, really pretty much everything that has to do with supporting students through the financial aid process. That’s what our office is here to do.

Laura Vogt:
This year I know has been a little bit more of a challenge for financial aid. There was a lot of changes. Can you tell us a little bit about what those changes were and why things got pushed back?

Joseph Sell:
Certainly, yeah, so just to kind of take things back and maybe give a little context, so Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act in 2020, which really the intent was to by its name, simplify the FAFSA and make the process less cumbersome for students and families. Flashing forward to October 2023 when we were anticipating the application to go live, the application did not go live at that time. There was an initial delay into January and that’s really where kind of things were really different than what we were expecting. Really just to kind of summarize what has changed. We previously had what was called an Expected Family Contribution, the EFC, that’s now called the Student Aid Index, which is SAI. While there’s still the similar concept, the calculation in the formula is different and the questions that the FAFSA asks are different. There are some fewer questions, some different questions.
Again, the intent really was to again simplify that ask fewer questions and streamline the process for families. One of the unique changes for the FAFSA this year is that instead of having the IRS data retrieval tool that we had in the past, the FAFSA can actually interface directly with the IRS to do a direct exchange of information. That makes the process a lot more seamless so that families are not having to report a lot of their information. It reduces perhaps any error in reported information, and so that way the financial package a student gets initially should hopefully be accurate from the time they get that.
Now that said, we did see a number of unanticipated challenges where families were not able to get to the FAFSA as expected. A lot of just really technical issues where families, for example, mixed status families were groups that was really, really significantly impacted by these changes. In the past with FAFSA, parents that did not have a social security number would mail off a signature page to FAFSA, which while it took a little bit of time was still a relatively reliable process. With new changes, the intent was for parents without a social security number to be able to still assign the FAFSA electronically with their student. That process did not quite work as anticipated, so a lot of families, mixed status families in particular, really challenged by getting through the FAFSA.
I will say we held a lot of FAFSA workshops on campus and I just want to really just share how resilient and how patient our students and their families are with this process. We worked with a number of students who were really working with their parents a number of times to try to get through and we’re just encountering some challenges along the way. Over the period of the spring we’ve seen a lot of those resolutions coming through. A lot of those were getting resolved in real time as a lot of those updates were coming through from Department of Ed, as we were getting issues and updates from Department of Ed. I can share now that the majority of our students are now able to get to the FAFSA.
We do know there are still some families and some barriers still that students are encountering and some families that still may not be able to get through the FAFSA yet, but a lot of those issues have now been resolved and the majority of them are still getting resolved at this point. Really there’s just a lot of changes with the application, but really at its surface the process is still very similar. The application still does look for a lot of the same information, the family’s income, the family’s assets, the number of individuals in the household, a lot of that is still very consistent. It’s just how the information is being collected and then the status and the nature of the electronic application that have changed a little bit this year and unfortunately have just created some challenges for students.

Laura Vogt:
If there are students that are still having a lot of those challenges, what’s the best way for them to get a hold of somebody to try to work through them?

Joseph Sell:
At this point, so we’ve got a couple of things. First off, I would say students can definitely come in to speak with us, so our Cal student central advisors, our team in financial aid. We’ve answered a lot of these questions by now so we have a general idea of where some of the work arounds are or what some of the solutions are to some of the common problems that families are encountering. That said, we still don’t have all of the answers, and so there is also the Federal Student Aid Information Center, the FSAIC, that students can call. We did get a lot of feedback that there was a bit of a long wait for when calling that number, but that is the direct connection to get to Department of Ed. Often they will be able to create a case number if it’s something that actually needs a little more review.
I would say either one. Students are definitely welcome to check with us first because if it’s something that we can answer or we can support with, we definitely want to help through those last steps. But there may also be, it may be a question that does need to go through the Information Center, especially as a more technical response, but we can, I think, share that information hopefully as a link with the podcast as well.

Laura Vogt:
Definitely. We’ll definitely make sure we link to that.

Joseph Sell:
Perfect. Perfect.

Laura Vogt:
On the CalCentral for students, I know they have My Finances page, how do they get to that and what kind of notifications are on there for them?

Joseph Sell:
Yeah, so CalCentral is really the hub for a lot of the students’ financial aid information, and so really I would definitely encourage students to start getting comfortable with CalCentral and checking it out just to see the different items that are there. CalCentral does feature all of the students’ financial aid information that they need to see and know. We post award packages there. We post what’s called the estimated cost of attendance, which is really the total sort of estimated cost to attend UC Berkeley. It does not necessarily mean that’s the actual bill the student will have at Berkeley, but it captures all of their costs. Some of them billable like tuition and fees or health insurance or on-campus housing, but many of them not billable, things like personal expenses or transportation expenses, books and supplies or living off campus.
We still try to account for all of those costs. That way we can still offer financial aid resources to help cover those costs. It’s still good for students to look at that cost of attendance because it does give a bit of a framework or kind of a budget for maybe what the average and some of those expenses might be. But we also recognize that that doesn’t align to every student’s circumstance, so I think as we’ll go along the way, we can talk about the appeals and the options we have for students whose cost of attendance may not actually be reflective of their actual costs. But yeah, CalCentral has a lot of other information, has a lot of their academic information there. There’s just a lot of other resources through CalCentral, so definitely the starting place for students to seek their information as well as links to how to get in contact with us, links to various appeals, that sort of thing are all there through CalCentral.

Laura Vogt:
There’s a checklist on there that if they’re missing something that’ll notify them?

Joseph Sell:
Absolutely, yeah. We do have our tasks on My Finances section of CalCentral. One of those tabs will say My Finances. If students click on that, it will initially give them a page that’s sort of an overview of their financial information. Again, that cost of attendance as well as any tasks that they’re required to complete. Students may be required to complete a verification. Sometimes when filing the FAFSA, Department of Ed will select a student for a verification process. That could be verification of the family’s income. Sometimes it’s a verification of identity where students just need to come in and sign a form in front of a financial aid officer by providing a copy of their ID. Sometimes it’s as simple as that, but other times there could be other items that need to be resolved, especially if going through the FAFSA if something maybe does not match or there’s an error or something and it’s noticed by the FAFSA, then occasionally we need to resolve that and so we may ask for additional documents or request a form or something for students to help clarify any information that needs resolved, emails if anything is required too.
Those tasks will be there. We’ll also send an email to students whenever something is being requested. That’s something else I kind of like to just remind students is please check your emails. I recognize there’s a lot of emails coming through, especially these days, and so it can be a bit kind of burdensome to go through all the time, but if you ever see any emails from Financial Aid and Scholarships where we’re sending communication, it’s to try to either alert you of something or just make sure you’re aware of something that either is required, something that’s changed, or just something that we think will be informational for you to know. Just definitely encouraging students to continue to monitor emails and definitely please open any emails that they see that come from Financial Aid and scholarships.

Laura Vogt:
Are the emails sent to their @Berkeley.edu address?

Joseph Sell:
Yes, so we do always email students through their Berkeley email, so definitely encouraging students to specifically monitor that email or make sure it gets forwarded to whatever email they’re checking, but just make sure they are accessing that Berkeley email.

Laura Vogt:
I know we have a lot of our students are, that Berkeley.edu is pretty new right now, so we got to get in there and start checking it.

Joseph Sell:
Definitely a change, especially if you’re looking at your personal email or maybe you just have a bunch of spam, I know that feeling. But getting to Berkeley, that’s how we best communicate with students because we are often communicating with tens of thousands of students, and so phone calls really just unfortunately aren’t feasible for every individual student so we do a lot of our communication through email. We do still always make phone calls if it’s something we want to give a phone call about, but we do send a lot of emails just to make sure we’re getting as much information out there to as many students as possible.

Laura Vogt:
Is it too late for students to start looking into getting financial aid?

Joseph Sell:
No, it is not. The FAFSA has a priority deadline and a state deadline. Each state actually has their own deadline, and that deadline is usually specifically for specific state programs. For example, in the state of California, the typical aid application deadline is usually around March 2nd. Just going back to some of the changes we saw, so in response to the number of the barriers that we saw, the challenges we saw with the new FAFSA, California and UC were very receptive and responsive to that to try to create more flexibility for students. The state did push that deadline back from typically March 2nd out to May. May 2nd was the last deadline that they pushed out to. That way more students would’ve access to Cal Grant if they were still encountering challenges getting through the FAFSA application.
Now that said, that deadline is not a hard and fast deadline, students can still submit their FAFSA after that. Now, if it’s a new student, they may be limited in their consideration for say the Cal Grant for example, but all of our other university grants, scholarships, federal grants, work study loans, those are not bound by that priority deadline, so as long as students are able to submit their FAFSA before, even sometimes during the academic year, if it takes a little more time to do so, it’s still not too late to submit that application.

Laura Vogt:
What are the options available for a student whose financial circumstances have changed since they were accepted to Berkeley or since the values that were used when they applied for the FAFSA?

Joseph Sell:
We have an appeal process. This is one of the options that we offer for students whose circumstances just may not align with what’s on the FAFSA. Something that was added to, implemented, the FAFSA a number of years ago was that the FAFSA looks at the parent’s information from two years prior. The information provided on the FAFSA may not be what is more current in the family’s ability to contribute to their student’s education. For this year, it’s looking at 2022 income, so if there’s been a change since then, the FAFSA is not going to capture that. We offer what’s called an economic hardship appeal. It was previously our EFC appeal. We might call it an SAI appeal, but it’s an economic hardship appeal, which is essentially our opportunity to capture those changes in the family circumstances. If there has been a reduction in income or a parent’s perhaps lost their job since 2022, that appeal process allows the family to provide documentation of that. That typically might be a more current tax return or some other documentation of that loss of income or that change in income.
That could also be significant out-of-pocket expenses maybe the family is incurring. If there are a bunch of medical expenses that perhaps the family is paying out of pocket. Those are something we can also try to take into consideration to perhaps offer more need-based financial aid to students. That appeal process is one of the forms we offer. It is accessible through CalCentral. The direct link to access our appeals forms is berkeley.studentforms.com. Students can either just go directly to that link or click the verification and appeals forms link on their CalCentral. Either we’ll get them there. But one of those options will be an economic hardship appeal and that is open now.
One thing that I’ll share is that we’re not able to actually make or send corrections or adjustments to FAFSA information just yet. That functionality is supposed to open up at the end of June. Students can definitely submit their appeals now. We can look at them and work with students to make sure all the documentation information is there, but we’ll officially begin to start adjusting those SAIs and be able to see award changes starting roughly beginning of July as we can begin that process.

Laura Vogt:
What are the difference between the different types of loans a student could be offered?

Joseph Sell:
Yeah, and maybe before I answer this question, I want to just go back. I was a bit remiss in not specifying that this information is also for the FAFSA as well as the California Dream Act application as well.

Laura Vogt:
Oh yes.

Joseph Sell:
While many of the changes we saw were from the federal side, the California Dream Act application also mirrored these corrections or these changes as well. I apologize for not mentioning that earlier, but all of these changes and a lot of the information I’m sharing also refers with the California Dream Act application as well. Now to that end, so students will be offered, depending on which application they can file, will indicate what types of loans a student can access. The FAFSA, students that can file the FAFSA are eligible for federal student loans. Some of those loans they might see will be a federal subsidized loan, a federal unsubsidized loan, and often if student is a dependent, which means that their parent provides information on the FAFSA with them, they may also find what’s called a parent plus loan.
Now, these loans, really the major difference between them is that subsidized versus that unsubsidized status. If the loan is called subsidized, that means that Department of Ed is subsidizing the interest. They’re paying the interest for the student while they’re enrolled in school, which means that that loan is not going to accrue any interest until six months after graduation. When the student begins that repayment on that loan, it then begins to accrue that interest over time. A federal unsubsidized loan and a parent plus loan similarly do not have that same benefit. When they disperse to the student, that interest is going to slowly begin accruing from the day it disperses to the student or the parent if it’s a parent plus loan. Now the parent and the student don’t have to make payments on that loan until six months after they graduate, but an unsubsidized loan will have gathered any interest up until then, so they may be paying a little more than they initially borrowed as a subsidized loan.
If you’re able to pay that off before graduation, for example, you’re going to pay the exact amount that you borrowed. That’s really the primary difference between those two. A subsidized loan is considered to be a need-based award. Availability of a subsidized loan will depend on the Student Aid Index, the SAI. Some students may receive that loan while others may see more unsubsidized or parent plus loan. To talk a little about the parent plus loan, this is a loan that parents can borrow on behalf of their student, again, specifically for dependent students. It is an unsubsidized loan. The parent actually does a separate application process through Department of Ed, and that link is just at StudentAid.gov. They would complete the application. There is a credit check process at the end. If the parent is approved, then they can borrow up to whatever their eligibility is for that plus loan that we will make available for them in CalCentral.
Typically that’s just up to their cost of attendance that’s not being met with any other type of student aid. If the parent is not approved through credit, sometimes we can offer the student some additional unsubsidized loan, but the parent would actually have to apply and go through the credit check process. If the parent just does not wish to go through the process, that doesn’t allow us to increase the unsubsidized loan, but students could then perhaps seek a private loan if they want to look for other loan funding outside of the different federal loan programs. Those are pretty strict, specifically for our FAFSA filing students. We also have some institutional loans. One is called a Berkeley loan. We do offer some of that to students who are FAFSA filers. Occasionally, if we’ve offered all of their subsidized work-study, unsubsidized loan, there’s still a little bit of room for some additional need-based loan. Occasionally they may see what’s called a Berkeley loan.
Now for California Dream Act filers, unfortunately they’re not eligible for federal aid, but they are eligible for what’s called a California Dream Loan. It’s a state loan. It’s typically up to $4,000. We do at least have that available for students that file the Dream Act application. I will say, really for the FAFSA versus the Dream Act, that’s really one of the major differences. All those students that file the Dream Act application may not be eligible for federal aid. They are still eligible for state and institutional aid, and so we’ll often try to make sure that if that student would be eligible for Pell Grant, that we’re making up for that in some form of institutional aid instead if we can. Really it’s just the highlight that there are different types of loans for a few different applications, but really that’s one of the major differences between the two.

Laura Vogt:
What do you counsel students when they’re worried about taking out those loans?

Joseph Sell:
Yeah, I certainly understand there are a lot of hesitation about some borrowing, student loans. It’s definitely a huge commitment, and definitely if there are free resources out there those are absolutely what you want to be maximizing. But I will say too, that loans are a resource that are offered, and so often if grants and scholarships are just not enough to cover those expenses, that’s when you then want to start to take a look at student loans. You may take a look and say, what are my expenses for the year? What are my resources for the year, my grants, my scholarships, employment, whatever other sort of non-loan resources I have, and what is my shortfall there? Perhaps that might be what you might want to look at borrowing from a student loan. Again, especially if it’s a subsidized loan, that’s definitely one to maximize because it has that benefit of not accruing interest.
But really, I would say definitely feel free to let us know if you have questions about loans before you’re borrowing. Happy to discuss those, but really just not to be afraid of loans. They’re there. They’re a resource to support you if you need that for your financial or for your expenses. But also, again, looking for outside scholarships too, because those could be resources to replace that loan eligibility. We’ll offer as much as we can based on the FAFSA information. That doesn’t limit students from going and applying for outside awards, department awards perhaps, so checking with their departments with on-campus organizations, outside organizations, seeing if there’s other funding out there that can perhaps replace a loan instead. But just to remind students that loans are a resource available to them and can really help with some of those additional expenses if they’re needed.

Laura Vogt:
For scholarships, you have a pretty good website that’s got quite a few options to go looking through?

Joseph Sell:
Yeah, we have a number of resources on our website. One I like to refer students to first is the scholarships.berkeley.edu. I believe that goes to the Office of Undergraduate Research and Scholarships. They post a lot of really great scholarship opportunities there, and often these are sort of the larger national competitive scholarships, but are still very good resources for students to check out. That’s just one starting place. Really on our financial aid website, if students just type in scholarships, we have a whole website or whole page that gives a number of different links to just those more general scholarship resources out there. Scholarships really, a lot of it is doing the research or sort of searching to find where the funding is and what we can kind of start and give some sort of general recommendations of starting places.

Again, a lot of that is people in departments, organizations, perhaps even your parents’ employers, sometimes they offer scholarships, just community organizations. Really there are often a lot of opportunities out there. Even just little $500 scholarships can really add up over time. Yeah, scholarships.berkeley.edu is one place to start, but also just on our website searching scholarships, we have a number of other resources out there to get started in the process.

Laura Vogt:
One of the options I know that some students have is Work study. Can you tell us more about what that program is and how you would participate in it?

Joseph Sell:
Yeah, so Work Study is also considered a need-based financial aid resource and so it is a federal resource. Because essentially it is allowing students to work on campus, and it provides, basically it opens up more job opportunities for students essentially. Some employers can only hire through the Work-Study program, and so if a student is eligible for Work Study, that then opens up a number of additional opportunities for them that they may not have if they were not eligible. Work Study really works like a regular job.

A student receives a paycheck in hand. It does not pay for their student account like all other types of financial aid do. It really is a job. The amount that you earn is based on the hours you work or perhaps based on the position that you’re working in, and you still would work with an employer to work with those hours.

One benefit with Work Study specifically is that employers often know that you are a student first and so there’s often more flexibility with hours and understanding your priorities as a student that you may not find with a non-Work Study or an off-campus employer. It is a resource to offer to students based on their FAFSA or the Dream Act application information. We can offer Work Study as well to students who are employment authorized on the Dream Act application. If students are interested, we will typically post that initially. That way students can accept that Work Study through their CalCentral. Usually roughly by the middle of August, if students have not accepted that Work Study, we typically will then turn it into a loan instead. But we can always usually move that back if the student wants, just let us know. There’s also a convert loan to Work Study feature in CalCentral where students can click on that and ask us to move either Work Study to a loan or loan to Work Study and vice versa.

That’s not to say that Work Study is a loan. I just want to be clear about that. Work Study, you’re not required to pay that back. You earn that through employment. That is your money to keep, but the eligibility could also be for a loan instead. If you’re not interested in using Work Study, especially perhaps as a first year, you may want to get some time under your belt to understand your studies and get a handle on your coursework before you jump into taking on a job as well, and so perhaps student loans might be more preferable to start with and then maybe move on to Work Study after that. But really it will offer it if students are eligible and it’s a great resource out there for some additional help with traditional expenses,.

Laura Vogt:
Is there anything that could affect the grants that a student’s given such as time here or grades or anything along those lines?

Joseph Sell:
Yeah, so students have to meet what’s called satisfactory academic progress in order to continue receiving financial aid. It’s a little bit different than the colleges will have the academic status, your academic standing. In financial aid, we have your satisfactory academic progress, and these are two separate measures. A student could be perhaps in good standing with their college, but maybe not meeting satisfactory academic progress. We call it SAP or SAP for short, but it could be vice versa. A student could perhaps be meeting SAP but not in good setting with their college.

The general criteria for SAP is that a student has to maintain a 2.0 GPA or higher if they’re an undergraduate student. For graduate students, that’s a 3.0 GPA or higher. They have to complete at least 67% of all attempted units at Berkeley. If you take a class and you pass it, then that’s a class you’ve attempted and completed.

If you take a class and you fail it or you drop it towards the end of the semester, that’s a class that you attempted but you did not complete. We will check those at the end of each year to see if at least that 67% has been completed. As long as students are meeting the GPA requirement and have not attempted more than 150% of their program, which for undergraduate students would be 180 units. For graduate students, it’s a little more specific based on their program. But for undergrads, if they’re within 180 units meeting that 67% and meeting that 2.0 GPA, they’re going to continue to be eligible for financial aid as long as they’re filing that aid application each year. If a student falls short of any one of those three measures, then they’re not meeting SAP and therefore they’re currently not eligible for financial aid for that year.

Now again, they may still be able to enroll if they’re perhaps continuing on probation or in good standing with their college, but the student would have the option to submit an SAP appeal in order to reinstate that financial aid eligibility. That appeal typically asks students just an idea of a past, present, future of what’s going on. What circumstances caused you to maybe fall short in those classes? What’s changed since then? What are your strategies moving forward to make sure you’re meeting that progress? That’s what we would ask students to share in that appeal. There’s a form that they would complete with their advisor, but that’s really that process just in case a student is not meeting those conditions. But as long as they’re continuing to meet those three requirements, we can continue to still offer financial aid, again, as long as they apply each year.

Laura Vogt:
I know for a lot of students, this is going to be the first time that they really have to worry about budgeting. Is there any tools for them to learn how to budget or classes that they can attend or groups that they could join?

Joseph Sell:
There are a lot of tools out there. One I would really recommend is our Center for Financial Wellness, so formally Bears for Financial Success, they’re now the Center for Financial Wellness, a really, really great peer or student run peer mentor organization that is students coaching students on finances. Really they’re a great, great resource on personal budgeting. It’s things like debt management, just really all of those kind of questions of, I’ve got my financial aid, now what kind of thing?

They won’t be able to advise on financial aid specifically, but they can advise on everything after that. What do you once get your money? How’s the best way to budget it? How do you manage credit card? Are credit cards a good option for you? How do you manage that debt if they are? Just a bunch of different, just really great general budgeting advice.
Yeah, I would definitely recommend students connect with the Center for Financial Wellness. They do one-on-one coaching. They do workshops, a bunch of different resources on campus to help share that information with students, and they can also help connect to those other sort of tools if perhaps a student just wants a more personal budgeting tool, like something they can use on their own, like an app on their phone or something.

The Center for Financial Wellness can also kind of guide them through some of those tools and help them just find whatever resources they need to succeed in that budgeting.

Laura Vogt:
One of the things I think students might see closer to the beginning of the semester is a CNP note. What does that mean? Is that something they need to worry about?

Joseph Sell:
Yeah, the good news is not right now. Cancellation, that stands for Cancel for Non-payment. It’s an Office of the registrar policy that says that students must pay at least 20% of their tuition fees in order to remain enrolled in their classes for the semester. Now, this has been suspended over the past couple years, especially out of the pandemic, and that suspension has actually continued up until Spring 2026, so students should not be seeing that alert, at least at this time.

Now, I will at least just share what it is. If that policy comes back in the future, if a student were to not be able to pay that 20%, typically I will say that financial aid, that date is after financial aid disperses. If financial aid is enough to cover the 20% and the student has their file complete, there’s no tasks or anything that need to be completed, typically those students are going to be fine if their financial aid is enough to cover at least that 20%.
A student with the Cal Grant for example, that does cover the UC tuition. So a student with a Cal Grant, as long as their file is complete, should not have to worry too much about the CNP alert.

Now, again, that’s not going to come up this year, so it shouldn’t be something our students are seeing for this academic year. What I do want to share though is that that 20% is still important to know because in order for a student to be officially registered in the semester, they do have to pay at least 20% of their tuition and fees. While a student can be enrolled and attend classes and do many things as a student without having paid their fees just yet, paying that 20% then opens up those additional student services access. Things like the RSF, the Recreational Sports Facility. I think even borrowing things from the library, a lot of those accesses are limited until you’re an officially registered student.

It’s still important to make sure that everything is good with your financial aid file, everything’s arranged so that that 20% can be paid just to make sure you’re at least officially in those classes. That’s also going to make sure that students can enroll for the next semester too. It is important to at least make sure that fees are covered, that 20% is arranged for, but at this point, students are not expected to be canceled for that.

Laura Vogt:
Is there anything for during the semester, if a student has an emergency and needs funding?

Joseph Sell:
Yeah, a couple of resources. One I’ll share is the Basic Needs Center on campus. The Basic Needs Center has what’s called the Basic Needs Emergency Fund application, and the Basic Needs Center is there to support students who are maybe experiencing housing or food insecurity or just have other emergency expenses that are perhaps impacting their ability to fund their own basic needs.

Through the Basic Needs Center website, they do have a link to that application. It’ll just ask students to share more about their circumstances and what their needs are. That’s reviewed with the Basic Needs Team, often in partnership with our office as well to determine what sort of resources are there. Is this something where we maybe can assist with some of these expenses? Are there perhaps other resources we can connect students to maybe support with maybe the non-financial expense or non-financial barriers they are encountering? That’s one resource that exists on campus.

Another resource that I’ll mention, and I would say maybe more of the last option, but still an option that’s available for students is an emergency loan. An emergency loan is not really a student loan. It’s essentially a charge against the student account, but then gets refunded to the student, kind of like a pay-in-advance sort of thing. That is going to be a charge that shows up immediately on the account, but it also allows us to perhaps provide some short-term funding to students facing an emergency expense. That application is on CalCentral. It’s through My Finances section. On the right side, there is an area where it says apply for an emergency loan, and students can click on that and it’ll take them to the application where they can apply for that emergency loan.

Sometimes it may need a layer of approval from us depending on how much they’re requesting, or maybe if they’ve already requested an emergency loan in the past. I just want to again reiterate that is a charge that becomes due on the account within 60 days. Failure to repay the loan could create sort of holes down the line, which is why I say this is more of sort of a last option, but it is an option available for students who may be in need of that immediate short-term assistance.

Laura Vogt:
Is there anything that you want to add that we haven’t talked about today?

Joseph Sell:
Oh my gosh. Yeah. I think, again, I just want to reiterate what I said earlier is there’s been a lot of changes and I’m just, again, super just impressed and grateful for our students and for the resilience and their patience in getting through the new FAFSA and understanding the process and working with us and sort of navigating that process. We know there’s a lot of changes, but we are committed to working through them and helping our students get through them so please, please come see us if you have questions. I think we can share kind of how to get in contact with us. But we do offer advising through Cal Student Central. Cal Student Central is our sort of one-stop shop.

They’re offered, they have in-person services in Sproul Hall at 120 Sproul. They also offer advising through phones. We have a sort of a case ticketing system as well, and a virtual front desk where students can check in through sort of a Zoom front desk and either get connected to a Cal Student Central advisor or perhaps a financial aid counselor if it’s something that needs a little more in-depth financial aid advising.

Cal Student Central can also advise on registrar topics, often even billing or admissions topics. The Cal Student Central advisors are a wealth of knowledge for students, but if it’s a more in-depth financial aid conversation, we also have a team of counselors that can have more of those sort of longer term in-depth kind of financial advising conversations if those are helpful. Definitely please come see us in Sproul Hall. We have callback hours where we can speak over the phone. We can always make appointments as needed. Please just come see us and we can answer any of those questions that are coming up with these many, many changes we’re navigating this year.

Laura Vogt:
Well, thank you so much, Joe, for stopping by today and joining us again this year.

Joseph Sell:
Absolutely. Thanks again for having me, Laura.

Laura Vogt:
I think all this information is so important, and I know it’s so confusing, and it’s new for a lot of our students coming in. We’re going to have tons of links. I’ve got a pretty long list of links here for our students that we’ll send out an email and we’ll have it on the podcast website. Yeah, so definitely the websites. All the links that Joe shared today are going to be on our podcast page on the email that we’re sending out, and so you could check out engineering.berkeley.edu/ESSpodcast. Thank you everyone for tuning in this week. We’ll be back next week with more tips and resources.