Summer Sessions Financial Aid Estimator
Summer is just around the corner, and students can check to see whether they qualify for summer aid or not. The Summer Estimator tool is available on the Summer Financial Aid page. Students can use this tool to view the financial aid that they received during the summer. This includes Pell Grants, UC Davis Fee Grant, Summer University Grant, and Summer Advantage Grant. Then, the rest of the aid is in the form of loans, including Direct Subsidized, University Student, Parent Plus, etc. Students only need to input the number of units they plan to take during summer sessions 1, 2, or both and see how much they potentially qualify for.
How can students calculate and make sense of their summer session charges?
It is also important to understand that summer sessions charge tuition and fees differently than the normal school year. For summer sessions, tuition is charged by the number of units ($279 per unit) a student enrolls in. For example, a 4-unit class costs $1,116 by itself without including the summer mandatory fee ($374) per session.
In contrast, students in the normal school year are charged flat tuition fees split into three quarters of payment. For example, the in-state resident tuition is $13,104 for the 2022-23 school year, which is $4,368 per quarter. The majority of full-time students enroll in an average of 15 units per quarter during the normal school year. The cost is fairly similar, with 15 units in the summer session costing $4,185 and a normal school year costing $4,368.
One distinct difference between summer sessions and the normal school year is that summer classes run for six weeks, rather than ten weeks, during the normal school year. Students take finals in the last week of instruction, whereas students have finals week in the normal quarters, including the ten weeks of instruction. The pace of the quarter system is already faster than the semester system, so depending on the student's preferences, there are pros and cons to taking summer classes.
If your student chooses to take summer classes, and meets the summer criteria, they will be notified through email when their financial aid packages are ready to see.