<p>Pink Strawberry, are you prepared for the rupture with your parents?</p>
<p>Your plan is sound, but I fear for the emotional turmoil you face.</p>
<p>Best of Luck to you…as a parent I do not know how being the only child they are making you go through so much worry. Can you qualify for full aid? </p>
<p>The parents on this board are great and will guide you through this, stay in touch. Let us know how it is going.</p>
<p>Pink, I like your idea: a flagship college and on your own. I have some concerns though. 1)what about all the “other” costs of going to school: living expenses, books, etc. Somehow i doubt $6,000 will be enough. Be sure to speak to the college financial dept before switching.
2) how will your parents feel when you leave? It seems they are dedicated to you. Will they feel that you deserted them? Have they raised you since a newborn? I ask that only because I wasn’t sure how comfortable you are with their religion / traditions. How will they feel when you leave?
3) seems pretty clear to me that at 18, you feel more than ready to fly the coop. But are they recognizing your feelings? It might help them to know of your intentions.</p>
<p>Your hours are incredible and I appauld you for your efforts. Working 25 hours, plus a long commute and school in a tough major is really working. I agree you need to enjoy the things around you. Cutting back on work hours will help. Taking classes that don’t start so early will help. But, mostly, having that rational discussion with your parents so they understand what you need. That will take the sting out of the exhaustion you must feel every Sunday.</p>
<p>Good luck. I wish other kids knew how easy they have it!</p>
<p>Best of luck to you! Most important, STAY IN SCHOOL! try to lessen your work hours so as not to sacrifice your school work. TAKE SUMMER SCHOOL at your local Community College to lessen your load during the school year, and it saves you some money. </p>
<p>But, most importantly, love your parents, and communicate with them! You may not agree with how they parent you, but they love you and you love them and it is very important to have a future relationship with them!!! You do not want to go through life without those bonds intact!!</p>
<p>Difficult though it may be, I encourage you to base your strategy on the quality of the education and not on personal family considerations. In five months you’ll be an adult, and you can make decisions that include leaving home, and taking on loans. Moving from a top 30 school to a CC or to the State Flagship, or even taking courses at a local CC doesn’t seem like a wise education decision.</p>
<p>So I encourage you to consider a 5th option. Stay at your current college. Transfers are unlikely to lead you to an equivalent school. And move to the dorms next year. Come May, you can let your parents know that’s what you’re doing. And then do it. My sixth sense is that they’ll continue to support you. After all you’re still at the same college. But if they don’t, take out loans to cover your gap. Do as well as you can in your sophomore year. Drop working overtime – just enough to get expense money. Be frugal – e.g. no car. Work with your college to get health coverage in case your parents drop you from their policy. See if you can get an improved scholarship your junior year.</p>
<p>Much is said of the “horror” of student loans on this forum. They are not the end of the world, and given your situation they’re not worth worrying about.</p>
<p>Focus on a quality education.</p>
<p>Thanks once again for all the advice. Yes, I’ve already applied for Fall 2010 transfer (will find out by April).</p>
<p>Limabeans: Good point - in addition to loans, I will have over $4,000 saved up by Fall, which will cover expenses such as books, food, and clothes. The loans are only to cover tuition for 3 years (hopefully). </p>
<p>Fogcity - I’m not sure if you understand the situation. If there was some easy option of simply moving into the dorms and not working, I would have done it. As it is, my mother is begging me to drop out of college even now - she’s very paranoid and I would say possibly suffers from some psychological problem. She flies into sudden rages and becomes completely irrational, then goes for weeks where she is calm and barely speaks. As for my father, he’s definitely stable, but controlling in such a way it’s frightening, and aggressive (sometimes physically) when upset. It’s very hard to have a rational discussion with either one of them, they don’t follow the logic most people do. I’m not going to go into further detail, but staying is not an option I’m considering at this point. I will say, we do a great job of passing as the friendly family-next-door. </p>
<p>It’s true my new college won’t be as highly ranked as the current one. But that has little to do with quality of education and more to do with irrelevant factors such as alumni donations, peer evaluations, and other useless garbage US News or Princeton Review feeds to suburban parents and their insecure teenagers desperate for validation of some sort. The important thing is the state university has strong programs in my field (Biochemistry), small class sizes, and excellent undergraduate research opportunities - more than enough to make me happy. </p>
<p>Thanks for the good luck wishes. 
I’ll update when I find out where I’ve been accepted.</p>
<p>Ahh, the state flagship is almost certainly going to be more than $6 K. There will be books, lab fees, other stuff – plus room and board. Plan on needing about $15K to get through the year (unless you are working for housing as a nanny). </p>
<p>Please, please, don’t “burn your bridges” when you leave. It is very tempting to blast your parents and be hateful and rude. It is also very immature. You can be respectful and still be firm. You may want to read “Toxic Parents” by Susan Forward. It is an excellent read and you can draw from other people’s experiences on the mindset and techniques that work with parents that are . . .difficult or simply different. </p>
<p>Be respectful as you find your path-- that’s not the same as being a doormat. Believe me, you’ll be proud of yourself if you take this step.</p>
<p>I second or third the idea of talking to financial aid and general advisor at your present school before making any major changes. Although you have researched some costs, and have a general idea, once you move out if you are living on campus housing you have to consider what you will do during breaks and vacations. If not then there is the expense of an apartment or other living situation.
Please dont misunderstand, I applaud your research and understand your need to get out and on with your life. Just dont jump too far too fast with out all the informaiton. Also it is important to remember that becoming a legal adult doesnt change your financial dependence by law on your parents. According to the federal government you need to report their income/assests etc on fafsa forms for financial aid until the age of 24, even if you dont live with them. It is very difficult to claim financial independence these days. So you may need to look a little further how you can negotiatie all of the angles, assuming that you will not get or want to ask them for any assistance once you leave your home.</p>
<p>Wishing you the best.</p>
<p>One more suggestion…what about the possibility of transferring to an all girl’s school such as Smith or Wellesley? Your parents might not be concerned if they thought you weren’t in a co-ed environment. Perhaps you might get FA or a scholarship. You could live AWAY from your folks and “experience” college. Plus, the girls at these schools do have interactions with boys from nearby schools.</p>
<p>To clarify, I won’t live on campus, because room and board there is too expensive for me to juggle. If accepted, I’m going to split rent off campus with roommates. My best friend from high school goes to the college I will hopefully transfer to, and she lives off-campus with another girl, and they want a 3rd roommate. Rent is $200/month individually, or $1800/year, which is affordable for me. Over summers I will work as a live-in nanny to the family I work for now (I’ve already had this discussion with them). Of course I’ll get a part-time job in my new college as well, but only 12-15 hours a week or so. </p>
<p>I really wouldn’t ever want to go to a small liberal arts college, especially an all-girls school. Plus I was accepted to Barnard College (Women’s college in NY) in High School and they said no, because Barnard/Columbia require students to dorm freshmen year and they didn’t want me leaving home. Thanks for all of the suggestions. You’re right, I should talk to financial aid at my current college, and more importantly my future college to discuss this.</p>
<p>I guess it’s not this way anymore, but back when I was in school, if you lived independently for at least a year, supported yourself, and filed your own tax return, and could show the financial aid folks that you were no longer dependent on your parents, it could really help your aid situation. (You also had to be a certain age…maybe over 21.) Not that taking a year off is ideal by any means, but maybe you could find out from the financial aid office if this would help you at all.</p>
<p>ReadytoRoll, that’s a lot harder to do these days. To prevent parents setting their kids up as “independent”, it’s much much harder to prove that status as an undergrad.</p>
<p>Yeah, I had the same concerns TrinSF - plus I’m only 17 so 21 is a long way to go. I don’t know how to get myself legally emancipated but I’m not planning to…I just need to figure out the financial stuff at the new college so I can take out loans. I doubt my parents will be chipping in; I don’t mind taking out loans but I don’t know how much aid I’ll even be eligible for, since colleges expect parents to pay as much as they can.</p>
<p>OOOh, boyyyy. Sorry, you SHOULD mind taking out loans. You should mind very, very much. Too many financial aid offices say “Sign here” and the student happily signs the loan forms and goes off to buy books. It is not until graduation that they finally understand just what they have signed: thirty years of horrific debt payments. </p>
<p>People have delayed starting families because of college loans. People have been dropped by sweethearts because of college loans. People have had careers curtailed (no law school for you!) because of college loans. Even if your parents will only chip in $100 a month, it could make a huge difference in the rest of your life (another reason to be mature and work with them as much as possible). </p>
<p>I know you want to be free, free, free of your parents – but be careful that you don’t trade parental “shackles” for debt “Shackles”.</p>
<p>You need an established, good credit history + verification of funds and employment to take out private loans without a co-sign (I’m obviously assuming your parents wont be co-signing). If you can manage your costs with Federal Stafford loans, then that would be preferable but be cautious if you’re thinking about relying on private loans.</p>
<p>Oh and good luck! You seem more intelligent and mature than 99.9999% of the 17 year olds I’ve ever seen.</p>
<p>You sound incredibly mature to me which probably comes from living in the toxic environment you have been living in; amazing how adversity makes one grow up quickly. Us older ones counsel “wait, you have the rest of your life to be free, be patient” but that is something we too learnt much later on in life…if you just think of the worst case scenario and if that is manageable for you…then just do it.</p>