Every aid year, the Financial Aid Office develops an average budget based on the expenses that all students are expected to have during a year. This is called the Cost of Attendance (COA) and can play a role in determining how much aid a student receives.

The COA is not an amount that the college charges, but rather an estimate of how much it costs to live and study at Solano for the typical nine-month school year. The reason the COA affects financial aid is that it is used to calculate a student’s unmet need. Unmet need is the actual number used to determine whether a student is within the threshold for a given need-based financial aid program. For example, students must have $1000 or more in unmet need to be eligible for Federal Work-Study (FWS).

The exact unmet need thresholds for a program depend on a variety of factors and can change from year to year, so we unfortunately cannot state exact numbers for most programs. Unmet need is defined as a student’s COA minus the sum of their Student Aid Index (SAI) and outside scholarships. The SAI, formerly Expected Family Contribution (EFC), is a number calculated by the government using FAFSA information that reflects how much they estimate a student will be able to pay for college in a given year.

Fewer than 6 units or considering dropping below 6 units? Federal regulations require us to reduce the COA for students attending less than half time. This can significantly impact the amount of financial aid a student receives. If you’re considering taking fewer than 6 units in a future term, or dropping below 6 units in the current term, contact the Financial Aid Office to see how this will affect your financial aid.

For the 2024-25 aid year, the financial aid office has used state averages provided by the California Student Aid Commission to develop the following nine-month budgets: