Every aid year, the financial aid office develops a basic budget based on the expenses that all students are expected to have during a year.

This budget is not an amount that the college charges, but an estimate of how much it costs to live for a typical nine-month school year. This estimate is used during the awarding process to determine your unmet financial need; many types of awards use unmet need as a criterion for eligibility or as a factor in determining award amounts.

Note: federal regulations require us to reduce a student’s budget when they enroll in less than six units in a term.

For the 2021-22 aid year, the financial aid office has used state averages provided by the California Student Aid Commission to develop the following nine-month budgets: