SRJC student Maddie Hillrigel supports the recent protests on campuses such as UC Davis against tuition hikes as she remains nervous while preparing to transfer to a four-year university.

Hillrigel, who has been spending approximately $600 per semester with the help of her parents, will have to make the leap to $2,736 per semester when she transfers to Sonoma State University. “I am a little nervous about the transition, but I’m hoping it will be manageable,” Hillrigel said. She has money set aside for college and plans on paying for the university of her choice.

Hillrigel is one of approximately one thousand SRJC students who will transfer to a UC or CSU this year and go from paying for a junior college to paying for a four-year university.

As the Occupy movements spread and fee-hike protests on college campuses grow, we wonder about how transfer students plan to pay for increasing university costs. The horror stories of massive debt through student loans after college are disheartening but there are methods to help pay for your university.

“The most common way that transfer students plan on paying for the four-year university is through financial aid, scholarships, jobs and they hope their parents will help too,” said Margaret Mann, SRJC coordinator of financial aid and outreach.

With CSU tuition fees averaging $5,285 a semester and UC tuition fees averaging $13,000 per semester, students from SRJC, whose tuition fees average $700 per semester, will have to pay a difference ranging from $4,585 to $12,300. The costs are inevitable, but there are ways to pay for them.

The expenses for tuition are not the only expenses transfer students will look at when they make their move. “For attendance for a nine-month academic year, transfer students are looking at room and board on or off campus, transportation, books, supplies and personal expenses,” Mann said. These are all things to take into consideration and some interesting stories come out of college students who are in the process of paying for college.

Mann said she had a student who lived in a very small community and was concerned about paying for college, so she went door to door asking for help and the community came up with $1,500.

An essential tool that helps transfer students’ pay for a four-year university is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) to qualify for student aid. Students can fill out the FAFSA annually to know if they are eligible for financial aid.  Mann advises FAFSA students to: “Make sure you have everything ready in advance, do it together with your parents, have your pin number in advance, have your tax information and social security number. Be sure to do it as soon as possible and don’t wait until taxes are done.” Mann said the common mistakes students make while filling out their FAFSA include: they list a parents income under the student’s income, the “adjusted gross” and “taxes paid” are listed as the same amount and parents claim investments that don’t need to be included on FAFSA.

Student loans can also help. Stafford subsidized loans offer a predicted interest rate of 6.8 percent for the 2012-2013 school year; this is the same interest rate as an unsubsidized loan.

Mann said there is a six-month grace period after you graduate to start repaying the loan and the current interest rate for students paying off their loans is 3.4 percent. The average time it takes for a student to pay back a loan is 10 years. Some do it faster but many drag their feet, taking up to 30 years.

Mann’s advice for students who plan to use student loans to pay for college is:  “Borrow responsibly, borrow as little as possible, but enough to get through. The better your planning is the easier it will be to pay off your loan. I tell students to live like students while they are students, so they don’t have to live like students after they graduate.”

It can be tempting to take a student loan, but Mann said if you can avoid borrowing, avoid it. While student debt is the best kind of debt to have, no debt is the best of all. Student loans should only be used for school-related things, not vacations, alcohol, a new car or credit card debt. If a financial aid officer finds out the student plans on using the loan for these things the student will be denied, Mann said.

Another way students’ pay for college is through scholarships. SRJC student Jemal Williams has received an academic scholarship to the University of Southern California as he plans to transfer in spring 2012. The approximate cost per year at USC is roughly $55,000, and Williams scholarship amount is $50,000. He is not feeling financially nervous about the transition, although he said the move makes him a little nervous.

SRJC offers an abundance of scholarships for transfer students. According to Kris Shear, SRJC director of student financial aid services, 1,700 scholarships are available for both continuing and transferring students.

Shear said the specific scholarship available for transferring students is the SRJC Foundation transferring student scholarship application. The application opens Jan. 1 and the deadline is March 4. The application puts a student into a pool of about 300 to 350 scholarships. It requires a 3.0 GPA, 56 in-progress or completed transferable units and full-time enrollment during the spring term when they apply. The scholarship is for students transferring for fall 2012.  The criterion for the scholarship includes a written essay about career and educational goals. Once the application is completed, it will go into a database that is looked at by up to 75 committees for selection.

In addition to that scholarship, there are other options offered by business and community organizations that each have separate requirements and are advertised at the scholarship office and their website. The scholarship website, which has a list of offered scholarships as well as their deadlines, can be found at:  http://www.santarosa.edu/app/paying-for-college/scholarship-office.

Williams plans to spend $2,000- $4,000 once he transfers. Currently he’s paid SRJC fees with the help of financial aid. By using the financial aid services here and receiving the Board of Governors fee waiver, Williams said, “It has been helpful in taking care of my classes. It has been less stressful for me to take care of, and I was able to buy a computer with the money I saved.”

With all the required college costs, it can be easy to get discouraged, but Williams insists on staying positive. “I think college is definitely worth the amount of money it costs,” he said. “Students can have a great experience at the college they go to and the amount of money a college graduate makes is $1 million more than that of those who don’t go to college. Knowledge is power. It can help you grow as a person as well as get a better job.”