<p>Hi everyone. I have been going through hell to try to make it so that I can use my grandmother as my legal guardian for the purpose of the FAFSA. I have lived with my grandmother for over 2 years and receive no financial support from my mother, father or step-father. However, I am now 18 and never bothered to change my legal guardian to my grandmother as I did not anticipate this situation and no other situations arose where it would have made a difference. Despite my efforts, the rules insist that I use my mother and step-father's income for FAFSA purposes. Their combined income is roughly $55k and my estimated EFC was aprox. $5300. That is a very daunting number for me as my grandmother has no types of savings and is living off of her monthly SSI checks. Is there any sort of provision to provide a more fair situation for someone in my position? I fear that I will not qualify for the Pell Grant with such a high EFC and therefore also not qualify for the large number of grants available only to Pell Grant recipients. If I were to take out a private loan I would assume roughly $22k of debt plus interest just in my private loans, as well as have to pay back the Stafford or other state-provided loans. If anyone could please, please suggest any sort of action I can take to make this situation fair I would GREATLY appreciate it. Receiving this aid could be the difference for me to be the first in my family to go to college. Thank you in advance to anyone who can provide any advice.</p>
<p>In order to save the time of irrelevant comments I wanted to post a few more things:
I am already considering a very cheap state school ($7k tuition), though hoped of transferring which by looking at this seems a very unrealistic possibility.
I have a 1900 SAT score but made a lot of mistakes in my HS education and therefore only have a sub-2.5 GPA.</p>
<p>How about living with your grandma and going to community college? I think that with a low GPA you will have a difficult time receiving any merit aid. Are you a senior this year? Is there a community college nearby where you can go? If you went to community college and got good grades you may be able to look into transferring after a few years.</p>
<p>Also, is going into the military an option you would consider? How about Americorps?</p>
<p>Unfortunately continuing to live with my grandma isn’t really an option so community college wouldn’t really be a possibility. And I am by no means someone who should go into the military. I am more looking for advice on how I could go about getting funds either from the institution I want to go to, the government or somewhere else. I have considered most any alternative I could think of and none of them seemed to fit me very well. Thank you though.</p>
<p>If there was some good reason, such as abuse or neglect, that you were living with your grandmother then you may be able to ask the school for a special circumstances dependency override that would grant you independent status for FAFSA. You would need to be able to provide some sort of documentation such as letters from teachers, counselors, police, or clergy that know your situtation. The override is something you would have to talk to your college about.</p>
<p>If there is not some extenuating circumstance that caused you to be living with your grandmother then ther is not much you can do.</p>
<p>You definitely need to negotiate this with each college. The EFC is not set in stone, but they are the only ones who can help you with this. Many people are in your situation, so don’t think that they won’t have an answer for you.</p>
<p>Swimcatsmom - I have already explored that route but unfortunately there isn’t really anything that I could document well enough to obtain independent status. Things like mental abuse and the like were present but I can’t really think of any way to prove it in a manner that would satisfy the requirements.</p>
<p>Gardna - Should I wait to receive my financial aid package from the school first? I was thinking that calling them and just trying to talk to people in the FAO could be helpful but wasn’t sure if I should wait until I have actual numbers.</p>
<p>You can wait if you want, but I think that you should have some lead time. They might not be able to help you at all. If community college is not an option and you don’t get the help you need, you want to have some time to come up with a plan. The good news is that you should be getting the financial aid package sometime this week or next week (unless you missed some kind of priority deadline) so waiting shouldn’t hurt that much.</p>
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<p>I don’t mean to discourage you, but unfortunately the lack of documentation will likely hurt your case. Colleges are unwilling to simply accept a student’s word for it that their parents won’t help; the way they see it, if you have parents and there are no extraordinary circumstances (ie documented abuse, becoming a ward of the state), the United States Code allows for a dependency override as swimcats mentioned, but it’s used only in exceedingly rare cases.</p>
<p>Are you a senior? I assume you are because you stated you were 18. Have you applied to or been accepted to any colleges? Which ones? Also, have you received your financial aid packages or are you waiting for them now?</p>
<p>Yes, I am a senior this year. Like I noted, I made a lot of poor decisions during HS and I didn’t get on the ball with my college plans until later than I should have. I just filled out the FAFSA yesterday because I was waiting to see if there was any chance at independent status or using my grandmother as my provider. I have been accepted by California University of Pennsylvania (Cal U) and Robert Morris University. I am heavily favoring Cal U though as it’s a much better fit, much cheaper and they seem to be more interested in me as a potential student.</p>
<p>That probably means that you missed the priority deadlines at these schools…not good. Do NOT miss whatever deadline PHEAA has for state grant eligibility! With an EFC over $4617, you won’t be Pell eligible.</p>
<p>Since you may not have any way to pay for college (private loans require a co-signer with good credit), are you open to taking a gap year? If so, you might be able to find schools that would help with grants/scholarships.</p>
<p>sk8rmom is usually right – if you plan to receive any financial aid, you shouldn’t put off the FAFSA because you often get worse aid the more you wait since more of the money is used up.</p>
<p>However, I think you might be in luck with Cal U of Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>Now, you’re not really out of the woods yet. Even though you met the deadline, because of your EFC you won’t get the Pell as sk8rmom mentions; however, you are still able to apply for at least an unsubsidized Stafford Loan and a Parent PLUS loan (but the latter requires your parents’ willingness to go into debt to finance your education). Your EFC isn’t too high, so you might get Work study or a Perkins loan (but I’m not clear on the exact income requirements for these) as well as any state grants that might be around.</p>
<p>It seems like not qualifying for the Pell Grant is really going to be a huge blow though. The system is just not well suited for someone in my situation it seems.</p>
<p>Oh, it isn’t. It’s really unfortunate since none of this is your fault; you can’t control what other people do and since you were not able to document anything obtaining the necessary override will be difficult. You will need to compare your financial aid package when you receive it to your Cost of Attendance and see how affordable the school is. You might want to reconsider community college though; for two years, you might be able to get a transfer articulation agreement to a state university or a participating private university, depending on your state.</p>
<p>sk8rmom - I am documented as living with my grandmother for welfare purposes because she received welfare checks after being laid off while she was waiting for her unemployment case to be settled. Would that be sufficient?</p>
<p>Gardna - So is that more or less saying that in the end I will probably need to take out $5k-$6k a year in private loans if I wanted to attend Cal U?</p>
<p>It’s possible; I’m not sure what the cost of attendance annually for Cal U is. If it’s low enough, and the school awards you enough Stafford and Perkins loans, you might not need that many in private loans. Also, your state might have its own grant program that doesn’t use the EFC in the same way as the Pell grant program.</p>
<p>Arabrab - I know she definitely received food stamps for me and I think that having me on her case was the difference between her being able to receive state health care which was especially important because the whole reason she was laid off was an injury. Would I still be able to apply for independent status this year even after having already filed the FAFSA as a dependent?</p>
<p>Gardna - I tried calculating it using both the numbers from their website and the numbers they reported to College Board and they came out in the $20k-$22k range.</p>
<p>I think that you should go to your HS GC and have a candid discussion about why you have been living with your grandmother (you can take documentation), what the nature of your relationship with your parents is (ie. no contact or whatever) and find out what they might need to support a letter going to colleges and asking for a professional judgement. It’s up to the college to grant you a dependency override, in which case I believe (but you should check if you make it that far!) that the college would amend your FAFSA to independent student status. If you didn’t have much income/assets of your own, you would likely qualify for a Pell grant. Again, you may or may not be in a situation that would qualify for this, but you can try!</p>
<p>Btw, I’m curious why you must use mom/stepdad instead of your father for FAFSA. If you lived with none, and none provided support, did one give you a better birthday present or something? Or are their income so similar it doesn’t make a difference in your EFC? I don’t really know what kids in this situation do but it’s an interesting question.</p>