JHS- this kid with a HS diploma is going to make enough money working in Virginia or MD to support herself AND then be able to pay for college by herself after establishing residency? What magical job does a HS graduate get that makes that fantasy possible? Even with instate tuition- how does this kid support herself (roof over her head) AND save for college?
Just not seeing reality here. The college will challenge her independent residency in their state by asking for a copy of her tax return. They can do multiplication and subtraction- a kid who made 18K last year and pays rent, food, utilities in one of the highest cost areas of the country doesn’t suddenly come up with enough money to pay for college without parental help, ergo the kid moved for the purposes of establishing residency to qualify for cheaper rates.
Someone in my town got tripped up by a cable television bill and their EZ Pass (claimed the kid lived over the state line independently). It was not hard for the state U to show that a kid who is paying a toll twice a day to cross a bridge is NOT living where the family claimed the kid was living.
OP- your time is better spent researching options you can afford without indulging in these schemes.
A little more than the MD schools but I’m partial to George Mason myself, if I lived there. For paying out of state I like VA Tech better. We hired Tech grads almost exclusively at a govt lab I used to work for.
American University is in DC and has decent support for OOS students and lots of connections for federal internships. Georgetown and GW may be outof your price range, but they’d be the best places to get started on a DC career path.
As I have read the various rules in the past, I don’t think the kid would have to support herself 100% in order to qualify. She would have to provide the majority of her support (and probably more than 51%). Her parents could slip her a fiver now and then.
I’m not arguing for this as an actual, practical solution for the OP’s daughter. It’s not. It’s just not as IMPOSSIBLE!!! as many posters have stated or implied.
I don’t really mean to get sucked into this, but state tuition residency requirements sort of offend me. With the possible exceptions of California and maybe Washington, states are desperate to attract young, college educated workers. If state governments were behaving thoughtfully, they would be offering everyone in-state tuition provided they agreed to remain in-state for [4? 5? 8?] years after graduation, or to pay the difference if they didn’t. Or even letting them come without a penalty for leaving, as long as they stated an intent to stay. But that would require providing more support now.
The states where it is easier to get in state tuition are the states that few want to move to e.g. Maine and Utah. Virginia and Maryland are not in that category.
It’s not impossible in the same way that it’s not impossible for me to join the Bolshoi Ballet. I’m human, I can walk and chew gum at the same time, I can move in time with music. But encouraging me to join the Bolshoi ignores the fact that I am 40 years older than most dancers who join, 30 lbs heavier, and five inches shorter. Oh- and my last dance class was 30 years ago. Good luck with that, Blossom.
JHS- of course it’s not impossible. But encouraging a HS kid with a plan which is not likely to succeed (if it were that easy, everyone would do it) seems like a poor way to kick off the college search for this family.
The mission of most public U’s are NOT to attract young college educated workers. They are to educate the citizens (and children of taxpayers) of the state. Ergo the disconnect you observe. This is not a trivial difference in mission. In my own state there have been controversies because the directional state U’s are good at pumping out young people who can’t get hired in their own state. (no, we don’t need more 3rd grade teachers, thank you very much). But the directionals can’t wake up one Tuesday and decide to break ground on a nano-technology lab-- so the ed schools crank along with a product (teacher training and certification) which is not capital intensive and cheap to operate.
Let’s talk real world, not theoretical but never ever gonna happen. In the real world, the only way you get IS college tuition at UVA is if the parents move to VA and become VA residents. If the parents don’t move, it is virtually impossible for the kid to do it. Since to get IS tuition, the kid has to pay for college all alone.
If the VA resident kid gets college partly paid for by the parents, then the kid is not financially independent any longer and will get charged OOS tuition. Kid living in the VA condo purchased by the OOS parents would be inconsistent with financial independence and a dead give away of the ruse.
This gig was do-able back in the days when attending the State U only cost a few grand. Making it financially possible for a kid to work his way through school on part time and summer jobs. UVA in-state COA is about $30k per year. So unless the kid’s part-time job is hedge-funding, it is going to be impossible to work, self-support and also save up enough to cover the $120k. And good luck convincing UVA that the kid deserves a big need-based fin aid package under these circumstances…
Probably the only even remotely possible way to do this is to go the VCCS route. Your kid lives and self-supports in VA while attending community college (self-funded) for two years. Then applies to transfer to UVA for the remaining two years. You get a UVA degree at the end, but obviously you don’t attend UVA for four years like a regular student does.
FYI, there’s about 50 better ideas than this for you to pursue to get a reasonably priced education for your kid. For example, why not apply to UVA as an OOS-er (extremely hard to get in fyi) and apply for OOS financial aid. UVA is one of the few publics that purport to meet full financial need of all students (even OOS-ers). They limit loans to OOS-ers to $7k per year.
But if your kid has the stats to get into UVA OOS, then your kid also would have the stats to get into lots of great private schools – Gtown, GW, Loyola, etc. – and get merit and/or need based financial aid that would make it affordable.
1 rule you'll learn by coming here to CC. The college's sticker price is not necessarily the actual net price that you'll pay. Tell us a few key things and we'll come up with tons of great affordable ideas for you.
What's your realistic annual budget to contribute to pay for your kid's college.
What's your general annual income range (so we can tell if fin aid is possible and how much).
What are your kid's basic academic stats (so we can tell where your kid can get in and also where you kid can get merit money).
What kind of school is your kid looking for (size, location, intended major).
The OP asked the question and has now been informed that her idea won’t work. Many people sending their first child off to college thinks it’s the way it was when we went to school. Also, the student can definitely become a resident of that state, but maybe not for instate tuition purposes, and definitely NOT for FA purposes. My friend bought a condo for his daughter in Knoxville and learned the hard way that that didn’t help with instate tuition. She lived in it for 4 years, and he sold it.
There are federal jobs all over the country and around the world, but there are more in DC than anywhere else. There are some postings that are ‘local area only’ (and those are all over the country too, and usually means the agency doesn’t want to pay for the relo or doesn’t want to wait for the employee to relocate). Usually it is easier to get a job in the area where you live because you are there for multiple interviews, you can follow up, you can ‘pound the payment,’ but if you want to work in the congressional office of your senator, being from Maryland or VA probably makes it much harder because there is so much competition for those jobs right around the capital. Montana or NM might be better…
UVA isn’t very close to DC anyway, it’s quite a drive from Charlottesville to DC. If your kid has the stats to get into UVA or UMD from out of state, they probably have the stats to get good merit at American or UDC, which are right in town and you can walk to the metro.
One more whack to make sure the horse is completely dead.
UVA’s IS admit rate is usually in the 40-45% range. The OOS admit rate is half of that. And note that all of UVA’s legacies (who get a substantial admissions break) are in the OOS pool.
So when you back out the OOS legacies, the admit rate for non-hooked OOS applicants is probably about 15%. That’s pretty much an Ivy League proposition. So if you are an unhooked OOS applicant, UVA is an extremely tough admit and it also comes with the high price tag. Wa-hoo-wah!!!
@AZBY96 One of my daughters goes to your state flagship. We live in Mass. She is a Senior now. At first I was a little disappointed with her choice. She was accepted into more selective schools. The only reason she wanted to go to URI was for club gymnastics- seriously. URI is one of the top club gymnastics teams in the country. Many schools are doing away with their gymnastics teams and the D2 and D3 schools are few, she is not a D1 gymnast. I slowly came to accept her choice when I received the financial package. She received a huge merit package, we don’t qualify for need based. It was our least expensive option, even over UMASS. She had a wonderful experience there and is now applying to grad schools. I now have money in the budget to help her! She is finished with her class requirements and next semester she will be doing a full time internship (for credit) at South County Hospital. (She was also accepted at Hasbro…but the drive is too long.) Her Internship will make her more competitive against other applicants in her chosen field- OT. Don’t poo- poo URI like I did, especially if she has Grad School plans. IMHO Grad school is very important in today’s working environment, no matter what the field.
The nice thing about URI is that it also supports the national student exchange https://nse.org/ and study abroad options. You might also look into reciprocity throughout NE http://www.nebhe.org/programs-overview/rsp-tuition-break/overview/ She could spend a semester, year or more than a year abroad or in different locations in the summer.
Almost all New England kids don’t want to go to their own state flagship. They think it will be like high school but it is not and they rarely see people that they know.
You should at least check out the honors program at URI. They have students who are Fulbright and Goldwater scholars, small classes with a dedicated staff. Also their own upperclass housing.
Your scheme of establishing a different state residency and independent status will not likely work. You’d have to move as a family before she graduated high school.
Anyway, I have a junior at URI who will be headed to Japan for a fifth year before we know it. He has had amazing internship opportunities also. And Christiane Amanpour did O’K with her URI education also. Of course if you can afford the private and OOS flagships, she will have many choices.
“She doesn’t need in state tuition but she wouldn’t mind the discount if she intends to stay in state.”
“She needs to pay her own way.”
When you say she needs to pay her own way - are you saying she needs to fully fund her college education? If yes, how is it even possible to consider that she could fund an OOS tuition?