<p>Do you live below the poverty line now because your entire family/parents have financial issues, or are you below the poverty line because you no longer live at home. I ask because your financial aid will be based almost entirely on your parents’ income until you are 24 years old.</p>
<p>As for scholarships… your best bet is likely to attend community college for two years and transfer. Like you said, you missed out on scholarships for seniors. But even if you had completed Algebra 2, scholarship/merit awards from colleges were not going to be plentiful anyways since your overall gpa is 3.0. While the upward trend toward 3.6 is very important for admissions, it still is not competitive enough to get major merit awards from most colleges.</p>
<p>There are very few colleges that give out scholarships for musicians or artists, and the colleges that do have money to give to musician/artists tend to give them out only to the genius-level gifted musicians/artists.</p>
<p>If you were my friend, child or relative, I would advise you to start looking at how to pay for college without relying on scholarships. You can certainly apply for them, but with your middle-of-the road gpa as well as still missing a college pre-req, you are not in a good spot for a scholarship. With that said, there are scholarships out there that you can look for and apply to, but that should not be your primary mode to paying for college. If a scholarship comes through, great–but if not, then you have already made plans to get through college already.</p>
<p>I suggest two years of community college followed by transfer. Go local, live at home. Some community colleges have scholarship funds for students who do well at their school, so look into that. Some community colleges have honor societies for students who do well, and if you join and are active, can apply for those particular scholarships. </p>
<p>Find out if your home state has any tuition help, grants or assistance for low-income students to attend state-schools.</p>
<p>Basically you need to get educated about how Financial Aid works and figure out what is going to be available to you. You also need to discuss how much debt you should take out to finance your education–discuss and fix a top limit that you will not go over no matter what (lots of students get in trouble because they get offered more loans than they can actually afford to payback after school ends–don’t assume because a loan is offered to you that it is a smart decision to take the loan!).</p>
<p>If your counselor is not giving you enough specifics, then try another. You can talk to one at your community college as well.</p>