Financial Aid at Cuesta is Aided by Julie Salgado

As the beginning of Cuesta College’s spring semester begins, the financial aid department is its busiest. “Students tend to wait to the last minute for a lot of things so they’re coming in here, asking for help,” said Julie Salgado, a financial aid specialist at Cuesta College. Salgado has worked as a financial aid specialist at Cuesta for nine years, and she has helped all kinds of students with their financial aid needs. 

As a financial aid specialist, Salgado processes all of the financial aid applications and connects with students to help them with questions about financial aid. “I like working with students, students are fun,” she said, “they have lots of needs and stuff and it’s really nice to be able to help with some of those.” 

Financial aid is also significantly different at a community college such as Cuesta than at a four-year university. “We have a lot of students that are older that may have kids or even grandkids, they have families, they have problems, they’ve been in and out of prison, they’ve been in jail, no high school history, no family history, we get a diverse population,” said Salgado. Because of this diverse array of students, financial aid needs look different for every single one.

While Cuesta does get a large amount of students that have unique financial needs, they also get a lot of freshly graduated students who look to Cuesta to get a free two years of college education through the Cuesta Promise, a financial aid program that grants free attendance for all students that go straight to Cuesta College following graduation from a high school in SLO County. “MBHS is in SLO County, so students there are almost a part of the Cuesta family,” said Salgado.

Even with the Cuesta Promise, after those two years are up, students generally aim to transfer to finish their degree at a four-year university, meaning they will have to pay tuition and fees for their school of choice. “Financial aid is important for all students because even if you have the richest parents in the world, it doesn’t mean that they’re automatically paying for a student’s college. We get lots of students who find that they’re not eligible for much because their parents' income is so high so it counts against them,” Salgado said, expressing her views on the subject of financial aid in this context. 

Overall, Salgado’s expertise in the financial aid world has been of use to hundreds of students at Cuesta College who may need the advice and guidance through the complicated and paperwork-filled process.