We have not yet filled out FAFSA because we would not have qualified for any aid. Both of our older girls got full tuition scholarships and even for the one year that both of them were in school at the same time, our EFC on the FAFSA 4-caster was $3000 above the cost of room&board for the two of them. While our income looks high on the FAFSA 4-caster, it doesn’t take into account the major medical bills we have had over the past several years or that we’ve already put two kids through school.
Our 20yo is going to graduate in May and is applying to grad schools. Grad schools acceptances in her major are around 20%, so even with a 3.95 GPA, it still isn’t a sure thing. My understanding is that as a grad student, she will be considered independent for FAFSA even though she is only 20yo. She has no income. Her scholarship paid for tuition, we paid for room and board, and she took community college classes in the summers to get finished in 3 years. Is there likely to be any issue with her getting loans through FAFSA for grad school? Her major is speech pathology and the clinical hours required make it difficult to have a job on top of going to school. She does not have a car. Our prime concern while she was an undergrad was that she maintain her GPA to keep her scholarship since that was worth a lot more than a minimum wage job would have paid.
We also have a 22yo living at home. She is working at just above minimum wage and saving up to buy a car and possibly return to college later after she figures out what she wants to do (lost scholarship after three years and changed her mind on her major, still doesn’t know what she wants to do). We are paying for her room and board at home along with medical and car insurance and having her on the family plan for her cell phone. Her only expenses are spending money and putting gas in the family car that we share. She has been saving at least 80% of her income, but her job is only part-time. Until she is able to buy a car, there will be transportation issues that will make it very difficult for her to get a full-time job. There is no public transportation.
Our 17yo will be going away to college in the fall. She has acceptances at her top two schools, but even though her scholarships are for >50% of the tuition, they still fall far short of what she needs. Her COA at Hofstra is almost $40k and at Pace is about $36k. She really needs to leave Texas because of her medical condition that makes her very prone to passing out when the temperature is over 80 degrees (year-round in Texas). This just started two years ago when she lost the ability to sweat. She is pretty much confined to the indoors year-round here except when we get cooler temperatures for a few weeks at a time. Her stats are good, but not great. She had a 27 composite on the ACT, has a 4.0 GPA on the 15 credit hours she has taken so far at the community college through dual credit and has a 3.8 GPA overall (unweighted). She is dyslexic and dysgraphic and has a connective tissue disorder that causes her to have constant pain which has been mostly in her dominant arm and shoulder for the past 1.5 years (and also causes the issue with passing out in the heat). She needed to be able to take it on a computer or have a scribe actually do the bubbling for her but that wasn’t approved. She was completely debilitated after taking the ACT and couldn’t use her right arm for several days, so she wasn’t able to take it a 2nd time to try to improve her score. Most of her teachers at the community college made computer versions of their tests for her and the disability office was willing to give her a scribe if she needed it. She didn’t get her official diagnosis from the geneticist until late October. Until that point, we were working off of many separate individual diagnoses for all the various problems caused by the connective tissue disorder. I’m sure that we could get the accommodation that she needs now, but by the time we got the official diagnosis, it was too late. We’ve been trying to figure out the diagnosis for five years.
She has applied for and been admitted to Hofstra and Pace in NY. She applied for Adelphi, but missed the early action deadline. We will hopefully hear from them soon. She has been admitted to UT Dallas (in-state school that is her financial safety).
Are there any other schools that you would recommend where her stats are high enough (overall GPA of 3.8, dual credit GPA of 4.0 with 15 credits, 27 ACT composite) that she would qualify for significant merit aid and has international business as a major and is LGBT-friendly and has a climate that is almost always below 80 degrees from late August through late May?