Long story short, I made a huge mistake going to a college I couldn’t afford and now they’re holding my transcript until I pay a crazy amount that I can’t afford at the moment, and I’m trying to get into a state school in my town. The thing is that I only went for a semester, and I have about 5 or 6 credits max. I read somewhere that having a small amount of credits like that wouldn’t really be much of an issue, but I don’t know how true that is. I sent an email to the college earlier so hopefully I get a response tomorrow.
I don’t believe there’s any way to get around it. You’ll have to pay your outstanding fees before they’ll release your transcript. Good luck.
No way around it, period.
The chance of your former college sacrificing their only point of leverage to get you to pay your financial obligations is zero.
What you might be able to do is get the new college to accept an unofficial transcript for the admission decision, with the provision that you will provide an official one that matches it once accepted. That would get you a little extra time to come up with the payment.
However, if you can’t afford to pay College #1 by the time College #2 needs the official transcript, you’ll be likely to have your admission to #2 rescinded.
Long story short, one way or another you will end up paying that bill.