Have you discussed with your parents if they are willing to provide their financial information when you fill out the FAFSA forms, even if they are not helping you with costs? This is much more important than visiting the colleges.
@PERplexD yes, they are willing to provide financial information. We had to do that for 1. my sister who attends college and 2. QuestBridge
I wouldn’t be surprised @anitomy if your EFC would actually be $0 (or very close to it). Do NOT despair. The recommendations above re: merit $ is good advice. Take it. Fill out everything. (Child #2 here did all of that along with 16 applications. I handled the FA end of things.) As long as your parents provide all of the Financials, based on your income numbers I wouldn’t worry. Our goal? $0 debt at the end of 4 years…on a shoestring budget, no less. (I do mean shoestring.) Lofty goal? Actually, it will absolutely be possible. Some colleges offered fantastic grant + merit; others just big fat grants. One college offered what I now know to be a “preferential package”…meaning they really really want him to attend. And let’s just say that package is more generous than what Yale’s calculator suggested we would pay, had he been accepted there. Be informed. Be ON TIME. Apply for EVERY financial everything. (And, if you can avoid loans, do…it will help later when you want options for grad school or anything else.)
Sorry to hear your parents don’t want to be bothered. That must hurt.
I’m glad @onceuponam said that. I was thinking it; but didn’t have the presence of mind to say it. But saying it now.
@onceuponamom I’m not too hurt by it; they are older than most parents and don’t speak any English. I think they feel intimidated and inferior to college-verse, especially being low-income immigrants. But of course I wish I was able to have the same opportunities as other students, especially since college admissions are so cutthroat these days!
- Do QuestBridge even if your income is on the border especially if you've had any other difficulties in your life. Note how your parent are not willing to pay on your application. I can't guarantee you'll get it, but it's worth a shot.
- Use SAT/ACT waivers if you qualify. It will make it easier for you to waive application fees.
- Apply to a mix of selective schools with good financial aid, schools with a ton of merit, and state schools. Really shop around for aid since you can't be sure where you'll be financially. Ivys and top LACs will give you the best need based aid, merit aid can also be really helpful at schools that have it, but make sure you have a backup school that you can afford--most likely this will be a state school.
But in my and many other cases attending Harvard, Yale, and the like are cheaper than state school. Of course you’d have to get in at first, but it’s worth it for financial reasons.
Apply to outside scholarships. Like junior year and early senior year are excellent times to start looking. If you wait till senior year after you’ve been accepted, you’ll be much more limited.
Also you don’t need to visit really. You can use google and brochures to do those essays. I did.
Also if you qualify look up college flyins. Basically a college will pay for you to visit for free. Typically you have to write a small essay, submit grades and scores, but it’s an amazing way to look at schools. Most apps are due the summer before senior year, so really start looking at if your colleges have them. Typically Liberal arts colleges have them, and not large universities.
solid advice from @dancelance for @anitomy and, um, (how do I say this…) “older”. Yup. Got that. Here.
Again, your emotional maturity, humility and compassion come through.
I’m going to PM you with a rec.
Championing your apps.
Totally.
@dancelance thank you! I will definitely look into the fly ins
I’m so sorry that you have to deal with this situation and I understand how it may be frustrating! The resounding message I have for you, though, is to not worry!
I didn’t visit a single college before I applied because I come from a family with low income and traveling just to see colleges si simply fiancnaily unfeasible. Now, our roles are a bit switched here wherein I was completely independent in my college application process (unless you count CC, in which case I was extremely dependent on and am still eternally grateful for) and never once really spoke to my parents about their thoughts on colleges as neither had ever really attended one. Yours is a bit stickier as they outright don’t want to help but the end result is the same. You may think you’re on your own but you aren’t because you have this amazing community for support and guidance! I wrote multiple Why ____ essays and was able to write them without ever stepping foot onto a single college campus. How? Thanks to technology, you don’t really have to. The main purpose of those essays are to get a deeper understanding of who you are, not who they are. The colleges know the programs they have and how nice the campus is, they just want to know what you could contribute and would garner from an education at so-and-so college. Browse through the websites of the colleges you really like, learn more about them, take the virtual tours if available or if not just watch tons of videos on YouTube of the campus (there’s a ton of them for each university). Even though I wasn’t able to have my parents’ guidance through this hectic process nor visit any campuses, I was blessed with acceptances at Princeton, Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown, Notre Dame and others along with wait lists at Columbia, Brown, UChicago, and Vanderbilt. I have no doubt in my mind that you can do it too!
Now on the other issue of financial aid, I am not sure if I’m reading something wrong. Has no one else noticed that $65,000 for total family income usually means HUGE financial aid packages from most top tier schools? This is literally from Harvard’s site: “And, if your family earns less than $65,000 per year, your parents pay nothing for you to attend Harvard. It is simply our effort to make sure you and your family know you can afford to attend Harvard.” If you manage to get into these schools which are mostly need-blind, you won’t have to really worry about your parents not paying for your college because they won’t be expected to. The hard part is just getting in!
Either way, you can still visit schools as an impressive number of them have fly ins which you should really do as they pay for it and you can get the feel you want from the colleges. Here’s a link to a list of these: http://blog.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/blog/2014-college-fly-in-programs/
And there’s a few more on this thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1761401-2015-fly-in-programs-and-diversity-open-houses.html
Best of luck bud! Feel free to PM me if you need any personal advice or help 
It looks like your AFC is $0, but your EFC (federal or each school’s) may not be $0. In any case, if the parent that you live with is unwilling to do financial aid paperwork, you won’t get any financial aid. Also, for colleges that require information from your other biological parent, if that parent is unwilling to do financial aid paperwork, you won’t get any financial aid.
If your parents are uncooperative, you need to make a merit-scholarship-seeking application list. http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/ lists some full ride scholarships that are automatically awarded if your GPA and SAT/ACT score are high enough. http://nmfscholarships.yolasite.com/ lists some automatic and competitive scholarships if you make National Merit Finalist (or sometimes other National Merit status). http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1678964-links-to-popular-threads-on-scholarships-and-lower-cost-colleges.html lists additional scholarships.
If the parent you live with won’t even fill in the FAFSA, then you may not even be able to get a direct loan or Pell grant. Then your price limit, after using a large-enough merit scholarship, would be only a few thousand dollars which you could earn from a part time job during the school year and/or summer jobs.
^^she already said the parent will fill out
Your main issue is picking schools where you can get in and also picking schools you can pay for. The visits are a secondary issue. I could not send my kid from CA to the east coast to visit so she applied without visits and matriculated without visits-- you do what you have to do.
4.01 W/3.9 UW GPA
710 CR 750 M 740 W (2200) SAT
Since you are on your own with the process, you will have to educate yourself about how aid works. Do not keep saying your EFC is 0 if you have not calculated it as such. It is a formula based on income it is NOT what your parents are willing to pay. Since you have your family financial for the forms you have already filled out, you can run the FAFSA4caster. When you get your FAFSA EFC you will know how much you are eligible for as far as Pell Grant goes. Your EFC may be 2 to 5k.
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Central Connecticut SU, University of Hartford, Boston U, Uconn, Villanova, Syracuse, Princeton, Brown, Columbia, UPenn, Yale, Boston C
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State colleges usually use FAFSA only to calculate aid based on your household only. Now for the colleges that give a lot of aid, they will also want the CSS Profile, Princeton will want it’s own paperwork. This asks for data like FAFSA but also ask more questions and also a form has to be filled out by your noncustodial parent if you have one. So you will want to run the Net Price calculators for your colleges to see what they will expect your family to pay. Colleges don’t give aid for the family portion and it doesn’t matter if the parents don’t want to pay. So if some college says your EFC for them is 5,000 that is what your family will have to contribute. If you don’t have a student loan already in your package then you can take a 5,500 loan freshman year and slightly more each year after to cover it. You cannot borrow more than your student loan alone.
So the suggestion above to have some safeties that are rock solid you will get in and can pay for is important. There is a QB kid this year who reported no acceptances because he went for high reach only and no low reach partners (Brown is not a low reach do not listen to Chances threads.) If your sister is getting a 4 year degree with no parental help and only 20 debt that is a pretty good deal. Maybe that will be a safety for you or you will go for some of those automatic scholarships for your safeties.
So please review the financial aid FAQ and all the pinned threads at the top of the aid forums.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1486647-financial-aid-faqs.html#latest
Is this a case of your parents not wanting to contribute toward your college costs, or not toward tuition but okay toward room/board (since you’d eat at home, too…), or a case or your parents willing to contribute but completely tapped out financially and unable to?
Run some NPCs - I suggest Colby, Macalester, Brown, and your state flagship. What are the results?
You found this website and all the adults here will help you. 
If you are female, there are several high-quality colleges that are 100% meets need schools and will likely offer you a lot of financial aid. Look at:
Wellesley
Barnard
Smith College
Mount Holyoke College
Bryn Mawr
These have the advantage of being a bit easier to get into (because of the self-selecting applicant pool) while offering the same caliber education, same reputation, and same caliber of student (per SAT/ACT/GPA) of peer co-ed schools. They are often closely integrated with surrounding co-ed schools so you can meet men.
Here is the FAFSA estimator discussed above, so you can get a realistic idea of your EFC. https://fafsa.ed.gov/FAFSA/app/f4cForm?execution=e1s1
At colleges that claim to meet full need (usually the most selective ones, and the women’s colleges listed above) they will cover everything except that EFC (actually they will use their own methodoloy so the number may be a little different, but it’s good as a ballpark.)
They may give you the entire amount in grants, or they may expect you to take out the subsidized federal student loans and do some minimal work-study. The federal loans are not the scary private loans you hear about. You probably won’t be more than $20-$30k in debt when you graduate, which is a manageable amount.
Some of the selective, but not too selective, private schools we identified whose NPC results came in very favorable for moderately low income included Brandeis, U of Rochester, Case Western, U of Miami, and Tulane. These are places where you might receive merit/need aid combinations approaching the Ivies in generosity without needing the crazy stats and luck to get in. These schools all emphasize expressed interest, but you can do that by requesting info, attending visits to your HS or local area, participating in online chats, etc. without actually visiting campus. Some schools in the same class that did not appear to offer especially great need-based aid as a matter of course were NYU, Carnegie Mellon, GWU, BU and Northeastern.
Our family income is similar to your projected income. We don’t have large savings or property other than our primary residence and our EFC is in the neighborhood of $5k. Yours may be different depending on actual income and assets. With that EFC, all my son will qualify for is the federal student loan ($5500 as a freshman, $6500 as a soph, and $7500 each year as a junior and senior) and maybe a Pell grant of a few hundred dollars. Your best bet is to check out colleges that will give you merit money for your stats. Make sure you have a financial safety in the mix too.
Most good-financial-aid-schools calculate EFC their own way. Students with divorced parents often get unpleasant surprised with schools’ EFC versus FAFSA EFC, since FAFSA only uses the custodial parent information, while most good-financial-aid schools want information from both parents. Check each school as to whether it uses only FAFSA, or also uses CSS Profile or other forms – if it uses CSS Profile or other forms, assume that it will require both parents’ information unless otherwise stated.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1675058-meet-full-need-schools-can-vary-significantly-in-their-net-prices-p1.html shows how different the financial aid offers from schools that claim to “meet full need” can be. So run the net price calculator on each school.
Thank you so much everyone! I really appreciate all of your help and recommendations