“I don’t get financial aid because my parents make too much money,” is a sentiment that many college students have heard, if not said themselves.

The middle class seemed to be a dreaded status for a college student. Student’s parents made too much money for a student to qualify for financial aid, but not enough money to pay for years of higher education.

Students who fall in the middle class range may now have an incentive for filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) because of the recently implemented Middle Class Scholarship (MCS) that has been around since 2014.

The MCS is a scholarship for undergraduate students who attend a University of California or a California State University system school, make at least a 3.0 GPA, whose parent(s) earn up to $150,000 and have a maximum annual household asset amount of $150,000.

Alexis Perez, ambassador for the MCS, said that tuition for UC and CSU schools had skyrocketed since the early 2000s and now middle class students need financial aid as well as students from low income families.

“The California government has created their own initiative to provide more aid to those families that fall within that middle income bracket,” Perez said. “Just to make sure that it’s not a burden for their children to go to a university in California.”

Monique Mejia, coordinator for the MCS through California Student Opportunity and Access Program (Cal-SOAP), said that she thinks students are intimidated by the financial aid process or they just don’t realize that they qualify for certain grants or scholarships.

“All they have to do is fill out the free application for FAFSA,” Mejia said.“There’s no special button that they have to push, they just fill out the FAFSA like normal and if they are eligible then they will receive the aid money.”

Perez said that the application will recognize if a student is eligible for the MCS and will automatically enroll the students who qualify.

“Scholarship is attached to the name of this grant, so a lot of people hear that and they think of a separate application or they think that they need to write a personal statement or provide more personal information,” Perez said. ­“Which is not the case.”

Mejia said that last year 150,000 students were expected to qualify for the scholarship, but that only about half of that number applied, thus allowing more scholarship money to be allotted to qualifying students.

Depending on how many students fill out the FAFSA and qualify for the MCS, Mejia said that students in the UC system should expect to get around $1,100, and CSU students should expect to get around $700.

“That $700 can buy them a laptop or some of their books or their rent for one month,” Mejia said.

Mejia said that Cal-SOAP is trying to bring awareness to the MCS by attending functions at high schools and putting up flyers at community colleges to let possible transfer students know that they can receive money when they transfer by just applying for FAFSA. ­

The Middle Class Scholarship is for incoming freshmen, continuing students and transfer students throughout the UC and CSU systems.

The deadline in California to apply for FAFSA and the MCS is March 2.