It’s great that you are now considering college. Given you are a very strong student, I imagine you have good relationships with some of your teachers and maybe with your guidance counselor (GC). I’d let those people know about your plans to solicit their support. Even a GC with tons of advisees is likely to want to provide extra help and support to a student such as yourself with a process that can be formidable even for parents. Your GC may be able to help you negotiate the hurdles as well as steer funding offers your way.
Many high schools target high achieving students in junior year for funding offers/ “awards”, some of which are associated with nominal funds whereas some bring with them sizable funds-some of which must be applied for whereas some require you to be nominated. I"m guessing your plans made you a less obvious choice for those if your school has such a process (often displayed in “awards night”; some called “book awards”). But if you let your GC know about your plans she/he could help identify awards that you might be eligible for. There are also organizations that give fairly sizable awards to students who meet certain criteria-such as if their parents belong to certain unions or work in certain fields, have had certain experiences or for students whose parents are deceased. And there are various “book” awards some of which provide decent money. See what U of Rochester (still a mind blowingly expensive school so I’m just using this as an example) offers in this dated link (the link is dated and associated with a specific high school but it is an ongoing program:
https://www.wappingersschools.org/cms/lib01/NY01001463/Centricity/Domain/1400/Junior%20Awards-2016.pdf ) Likewise RIT offers money as well (https://www.rit.edu/marketing/sites/rit.edu.marketing/files/docs/pdfs/High_School_Awards.pdf). Again, these aren’t huge amounts but there are some that are sizable. Your GC will know about these. Some involve sizable gifts and others less so. Lastly, there are also community awards that are specific to a particular geographic area (sometimes offered by a corporation that established a foundation to benefit the local community and sometimes to bolster certain skills within that community). While some of these are very competitive others are so obscure that they have trouble finding applicants. One of my kids ended up with a 15K award that he learned about only because there was a small article in the local paper stating that the deadline had been extended because they had not received many applicants.
In most schools GCs meet with all students at least once about college. But I’m suggesting that you try to establish a more sustained relationship with your GC whereby he/she is aware of your goals and can take a more active role.This isn’t always possible and it is usually not possible for any GC to do this with all students. Yet I think many are eager to provide a bit more support for worthy students who might either not have other knowledgable people to help them or who have situations that are somewhat different from those of their peers. And, as you’ve seen here, there are certainly many knowledgable people eager to help here.