UC Application How-To Guide, Part IV: Application Fee Payment
This is the final installment of a four-part series. See Part I: Pick Your Major for how your choice of major may affect your application and chance of admission, Part II: Additional Comments for examples of information that should be included in the two “Additional comments” sections of your UC Application, and Part III: Personal Insight Questions Tricks for tips on how to quickly shorten and improve readability of your responses.
UC Application Fee Payment Options:
Online Payment
The UCs have outsourced the online payment processing to a third-party and the payment processing page integration is not quite perfect (the look and feel of the page is a little off; the URL will read “secureacceptance.cybersource.com/checkout” but there is no need to be alarmed, you are in the right place). There is a 15-minute time-out for the payment page; make sure you have your credit card in front of you before you proceed. For online payment, you must pay by credit card (Visa, Master, AMEX, or Discover). If you realize that you are not ready to submit the application while on the payment processing page, do not panic, simply click “Cancel” to be returned to the UC Application “Billing summary” page and sign out of the application from there. This will not affect your ability to pay the application fee or submit the application at a later time.
Payment by Mail
You also have the option to mail your payment (check or money order). To send payment by mail, select the “Pay by check (mail)” option. Make sure you send the payment with a copy of the bill (you will get that once you submit the application online) to the UC Application Center as soon as possible to prevent any delay in the processing of your UC Application.
Fee Waiver
The eligibility criteria for fee waiver are similar to the free/reduced-price school lunch program. To apply for a fee waiver, you should fill out the family income and family size questions in the “Your household” section (if you didn’t complete that section, you will have an opportunity to provide that information during the submission process to apply for fee waiver). During the submission process, if you are eligible for fee waiver, you must click “Yes” to accept it. The fee waiver is good for four (4) UC campuses and you need to pay $80 for each additional campus above the four allowed.
If you don’t qualify for the UC fee waiver but received another form of fee waiver (such as from College Board, ACT, NACAC, or EOPS), you may use that by selecting the “Pay by check (mail)” option and then contact the UC Application Center to inquire how best to send the fee waiver (last I heard, the fee waiver should be sent by email). Keep in mind that you cannot “stack” multiple fee waivers, such as using a combination of College Board and UC fee waivers.
If you don’t qualify for fee waiver but have special circumstances (recent job loss, death of primary income earner, etc.), select the “Pay by check (mail)” option to submit your application and then contact the UC Application Center to explain your situation. Fee waiver may be granted for special circumstances on a case-by-case basis.
Know someone who can benefit from this information? Share the page with family and friends using a button below!
Help support this blog by making a contribution by credit card (processed through Stripe) or through Zelle (to ) today! Any amount is greatly appreciated!
