<p>My situation: 25 years old. Won't get into the gory details but lets say I went into a funk about my eighth grade year(had never made a B, was offered the option to skip a grade, gifted classes, etc up to that point). Not drugs or alcohol or anything, but for whatever reason I lost my focus and drive and ended up graduating with a 2.6 and a 29 on my ACT. As I said I was completely unmotivated and I spent a few years essentially doing nothing. Fast forward to the beginning of Summer 06 and I'm 6'6 and almost 500 lbs and my prospects are dim. I had a health scare(luckily I'm ok) and amazingly it woke me up and I came to the conclusion I was wasting my life. I started dieting(down to 420 atm), enrolled at the local community college second summer semester, and I'm on pace to graduate with my associate's in accounting at the end of this semester. Unfortunately I had attended classes for a different major at this community college a few years before for two semesters, both of which ended with me no longer attending the majority of my classes and not even bothering to withdraw from them. As such despite the fact that I've essentially crammed a two year degree into under a year and I have made nothing lower than a B(primarily A's) I'm not holding my breath for any merit awards, and in fact I would feel guilty taking them from some high school kid who has worked his tail off. </p>
<p>At any rate I changed my mind toward the end of the fall semester and decided that I wasn't going to stop with an associate's. I applied to my University of choice(my state University) and was lucky enough to be accepted, although because of my spotty history I won't initially be admitted to the school of business(I assume if I continue to apply myself and make A's they'll eventually let me get the degree of my choice, right?). The only problem now is figuring out how to finance it. I considered putting it off a couple of years and saving money, but I feel at 25 I am already way behind the curve and I've wasted approximately a decade, so I'm in a bit of a hurry. I filled out my FAFSA on January 1, sent it to my school of choice and haven't heard anything back from them aside from an acceptance letter and a form to send back saying I was attending(I did so). Maybe I'm jumping the gun and I shouldn't have heard anything yet, but I am absurdly motivated(the whole wasting a decade thing) and I want to make sure all my ducks are in a row by day one of class so I can focus on a 4.0. </p>
<p>I received a letter from my state financial aid department saying I would receive approximately $1150 per semester from them, and I'm anticipating a solid pell grant award. However that will not be enough to cover tuition and books, much less all other expenses. Basically I have done as much reading as possible on the internet about the subject, and I've talked to the financial aid people at my community college(not a lot of help) and the people at my state school(slightly more help) and I still don't have a clue as to what exactly I should be trying to do. I have no credit(not bad credit, no credit at all, I can't even get a credit score) as I hate the idea of credit cards and prefer to save and pay for stuff I want. My parents would probably help me, but I'm 25 and the time for begging mommy and daddy for help is behind me, and they have my younger sister's college to worry about and not a lot of spare coin. If I absolutely have to maybe I would ask them to cosign a loan, but I would prefer not to, and I'd want to get them entirely off the hook for it as soon as possible. I would appreciate any advice as to what kind of aid I should be looking for. Different resources have said Stafford's are wonderful or worthless, SallyMae is worse than the mob when it comes to collection, and all kinds of other conflicting information as to what I should do. Any and all advice would be appreciated. </p>
<p>TnT</p>