<p>Okay, so I'm planning to attend SMC on the next fall term, but I currently reside in Illinois. I don't know how it's going to be, and how I'm suppose to find housing, so would anyone give me advice on what I should do to find affordable housing in LA? Btw, I'll be going there with no prior knowledge on the settings of California, or LA, and I'll probably be going there with little to no money.</p>
<p>Check City Data forums they may give better info on your last q’s</p>
<p>May I ask why you won’t attend CC in Illinois? Affordable, housing, and Los Angeles don’t belong in that same sentence lol. Plus, I’d suggest visiting. California is vast,with no prior knowledge in L.A. you’d probably end up getting lost in a suburban hell somewhere in South L.A.</p>
<p>You’re crazy. Forget school - you want to move to a city across the country not knowing anyone, not knowing the city at all, not having a place to stay, and not having any money? L.A. has plenty of homeless runaways and you’re asking to become one of them. How will you afford food, clothing, and shelter?</p>
<p>SMC is a fine CC but like the whole public education system here, it’s been gutted by budget cuts. Kids can’t get the classes they need, there have been protests (several at SMC, actually), and it’s just a mess. You’re better off going to one of the good CCs in Illinois (DuPage, Harper, CLC, Waubonsee, etc.) and then transferring to a school here. Happens all the time. However, and this is what I suspect you’re getting at, it’s essentially impossible for students under 24 to get CA residency for tuition purposes. You have to be completely and totally divorced financially from your parents (something that doesn’t happen until 40 for some people these days) and the only people who get the benefit of the doubt are the ones who’ve served in the military (rightly so, IMHO) as the state has more than its share of military bases. The state has enough trouble educating its own native born kids, which is why they don’t do much to help out of state students.</p>
<p>If you have your heart set on CA, you might want to also look at some of the fantastic private schools here - Stanford, Caltech, USC, the Claremont Colleges, Pepperdine, Occidental, etc. - as they don’t have the financial rollercoaster issues that the public schools have, and many of them give fantastic financial aid packages that help make it a reality for kids to attend regardless of their parents’ underlying means, or lack thereof. The UC schools are admitting more out of state students, but that’s because they pay the inflated out of state tuition which is more money in the schools’ pockets. In fact, if you compare out of state tuition for the UCs with the sticker price of top private schools these days, there isn’t much difference - and the state schools are very stingy with financial aid, even for in state students.</p>