<p>Queen’s mom, it’s too late to edit my post but I meant to write there are <em>some</em> not one.</p>
<p>Actually, not only did I like the article but I have used some of the advice for my own kids. My daughter is a good example of someone who attended an out of state university ( University of Cincinnati). We funded in her name several years worth of tuition and expenses. After the first year in which she paid all of her own expenses,she filed for in-state residency. She paid all of her costs for the first year and in the first year she got an Ohio drivers license and voters registration since she was attending University of Cincinnati. Starting in the second year, she was able to get instate tuition. Thus, the technique mentioned in the article WORKED! Don’t knock it till you try it.</p>
<p>I have a friend whose son attended UNLV. The son’s grandparents lived in Nevada and was responsible for him while he was there since he lived with the grandparents. He got instate tuition.
Also, the article does note that these techniques may not work everywhere and should be checked out. Likewise there are differences from state to state. Some 'academic common markets" will allow you to take courses in other schools within the market while others, such as in Maryland and other southern schools, only let you matriculate in out of state schools at in state rates if your state doesn’t have the major in the state.</p>
<p>There are the rules that each state U has for determining residency for admissions purposes, scholarship/aid purposes, and tuition purposes. They can be different. To complicate things further, many schools do not enforce the rules that they have. They don’t bother to verify, don’t really care. You say you are in state and that’s that.</p>
<p>However, you really can’t count on it. If you are not in state to the letter of the law, as a college has on their requirements, you can have the instate rug pulled out from under you any time. It’s a risk you take. So it’s all well and good to make the effort to get the in-state rate, but don’t count on it, if you are not making the requirement. Understand that each term the school bill you as in state could be your last one that way. But it does not hurt to try.</p>
<p>From everything I have seen, kids with separated parents, have been able to claim the state of either parent. Again, in some cases it’s an enforcement issue. I’ve yet to see a school try to deny the in state status of a kid if a parent is legitimately a resident of that state. But it could happen.</p>
<p>Some schools are very strict. They want the evidence of the day the parent got the paper work done to be in stat and won’t give in state status for a year afterwards, and too bad if you miss it by a day or two You still have to pay OOS. Michigan is that way. The admissions person for the program my son wanted was a transplant, and she had to pay the OOS for her own child, she told me. </p>
<p>Two schools in the same state, peer state schools could enforce their rules differently. So it’s worth giving it a go, but do not count on it so that your kid can’t go to school if the in state tuition rates are revoked.</p>
<p>Our S was at an OOS private & got a scholarship for residents in his last year or two of college, because he had made the state (CA) his home. He got his license and registered his car in that state and lived there and filed tax returns there. He would have been happy to stay there but ended up being hired to work in VA.</p>
<p>People have to be very careful about what they do and why and how they do it to be sure it’s all good and ends up with the results they expect. My nephew and his folks have bought a condo/apartment in TX there their S will live; their S will be OOS for his 1st year and then be a resident for subsequent years and qualify for in-state med school tuition at the med school he will be attending.</p>
<p>taxguy, I hope you sent a thank-you card to the good residents of Ohio – the people who are actually supporting the school to which your D is paying “in-state” tuition.</p>
<p>We are on the borderline as well. Thinking to buy a small house in neighboring state and move one parent’s mailing there.</p>
<p>In Virginia, it appears that every public college follows the same rules in determining residency, but some colleges are probably much more aggressive in enforcing it. After all, at some colleges, it may only be a small difference in tuition, while at other colleges it is 25K a year.</p>
<p>Before a family picks a state of residence purely for college reasons, they should also calculate commuting times and costs, differences in state and local tax rates, and even differences in auto insurance costs. Over time, those other factors may be more significant than what you save in tuition.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>An academic common market is not a “sneaky” way; it’s taking advantage of an explicitly set-up agreement between a bunch of states, and then they have restrictions on this as well. For the southern states agreement, IIRC it only works if a student selects a major not available at ANY public university in their state. For the majority of students, this won’t be applicable.</p></li>
<li><p>This is also not “sneaky,” just something that a lot of people don’t know about. There’s also a lot of restrictions on it that vary from state to state and university to university. My home state (Georgia) has this provision for CERTAIN public universities that are very close to our state’s borders - for example, I think Valdosta State University in southern Georgia may have this policy with students from southern Alabama and northern Florida. They have to live within a certain radius of the state line, and in some cases they are also required to want a major that’s not available at a university within a certain radius of their home (or in their state at all).</p></li>
<li><p>This isn’t sneaky either.</p></li>
<li><p>This will be nigh impossible. The student would have to either get emancipated or quite near it, which would require them to prove that they are supporting themselves. Often schools require them to prove that they have been supporting themselves for at least 2 years BEFORE enrollment. Sufficient student loans don’t count either, and even if they did, how would any 18-year-old get sufficient loans without co-signing from their parents? Emancipation requires there’s some compelling reason the student needs emancipation from their parents, like abuse or neglect, AND that the student can support themselves alone.</p></li>
<li><p>This is wrong. You cannot just pick any state as your Home of Record or legal residence if you join the military. Your Home of Record is the place that you joined the military from. If you were a Georgia resident when you joined the military, your Home of Record is GA. You can only change that if you leave the military and come back. Then there’s legal residence, which is the place you plan to return and live after you are discharged. You also cannot just pick any state for this. You have to show proof that you consider that state to be your permanent home. For this reason, military personnel’s legal residence state tends to be either their Home of Record OR a state that they were previously or currently stationed in. There’s also the tiny matter of having to serve 4-6 years on active duty just to avoid paying out-of-state fees. That can be worth it to some people who actually want to serve, but not for others.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Some of these seem a bit impractical. </p>
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<p>Really? Just pack up and move to the state that you want to go to school in a year ahead of time? That seems…redundant. So, we’re trying to save money on tuition by getting in state rates…presumably because we can’t afford the out of state rates. I’ve got it!! Let’s just move to the state of xyz so we can get cheaper tuition!! Right…because presumably one can just afford to pick up and move on a whim like that. Not to mention that this would necessitate high school students transferring schools for their senior year etc.</p>
<p>Join the military? Really? There’s nothing “sneaky” about that…and you’re signing away several years of your life by doing so. Sure, it definitely is a viable option for many people, but there’s nothing “sneaky” about it.</p>
<p>Schools occasionally bend the rules for people that live right by the states border? Again…not sneaky. Although I’ve never heard of this, it doesn’t sound unreasonable to me. But, I’m sure this doesn’t happen very frequently.</p>
<p>They forgot to list Hawaii as part of the Western Undergraduate Exchange Program, which allows residents from the states belonging to “WUE” to pay 150% resident tuition if they receive the scholarship to participate in the program.</p>
<p>Juillet, If many people don’t know about it, it is somewhat sneaky, although I do understand where you are coming from on this.</p>
<p>As for item 4 above, You DON’T need a formal emancipation, which the article implied. From my experience with my daughter, you simply must show that financially your kid was independent and truly declared a new domicile in the state that that are going to school in. This meant, at least for my daughter in Ohio:
- Change in voters registration in first year
- Change in driver’s license to school’s state
- Bank account in school’s state
- Enough money in their name or earning enough money by working to fund one full year of tuition, room and board and other expenses with proof of the payments by the kid
- We stopped claiming her as a dependent the year before school started and throughout the 5 years she was a student.
That was all that was required. My daughter’s school also wanted to see bank records for 6 months before she started school to ensure that we didn’t just fund her bank account a few months before school.It worked like a charm! Thus, don’t say it is impossible! It does, however, depend on the jurisdiction. Different states and schools might have different rules,but most do allow for financial independence.</p>
<p>As for the military being able to change residence, it isn’t as automatic as the article implies but it isn’t that hard to do either, so it isn’t wrong! They can claim as their domicile any state they are stationed in OR they can claim a state that they “intend to live in after they are discharged.” See the following: [Military</a> Legal Residence and Home of Record](<a href=“http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/militarylaw1/a/homeofrecord.htm]Military”>http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/militarylaw1/a/homeofrecord.htm)</p>
<p>Don’t you just love when people say something is "wrong " or, even better, “impossible” when people like me have accomplished exactly what they claimed was wrong or impossible?</p>
<p>Lasma, yes, my daughter did send a thank you to the school. We, on the other hand, could not send a thank you.</p>
<p>Back in the day, I was independent because I had enough savings to pay for my 1st year of the university, worked part-time during the school year & every summer, and became a resident of the state where I was attending school (OR). I loved my years there and would have stayed except I found I had a hard time with grey skies, after the two years of drought ended.</p>
<p>I didn’t see anything sneaky in that list either.</p>
<p>However, military can often choose their state of residence. Not any time it is convenient to them, but yes, they can be a resident of Vermont upon enlisting and choose to become a resident of Texas if stationed there. Many do that do to the favorable state tax treatment of certain states such as Texas and Florida. You can’t just pick the state out of the blue, but under certain circumstances, yes, you can change your state of residence. What I know familes do, is often have one person retain state residency and the other change it to have two states to choose. Being an army brat of sorts and the sibling several times over of one, with many friends in the military, I’ve seen this done a number of times. Good friends of ours have been residents of a number of states as they were transferred, gone through the official residency changes, often buying a home, changing voting status, car reg and drivers license like anyone else, or choosing not to do so and retaining a previous residency. But no they cannot just pick a state out without the circumstances allowing it, like living there and meeting the requirements. Military also have a lower standard of proof for these things. But I doubt any parent, at our ages, is going to join the military to get a state residency change. If any do, good for them.</p>
<p>The level of diligence on the part of the school can vary. Near the end of my D’s freshman year of high school, she had a unique opportunity to study at an elite high school training program within a public university. We were out of state and could not have afforded the tuition/room/board, etc. for her remaining three years of high school. I was able to work from home, so we sold our house in one state, moved to the state where the school was (just a few days before the start of the school year), paid full fare the first year which we considered to be amortized over three years, then she had an in-state scholarship that gave her a full ride for the final two years. </p>
<p>The school’s requirements for in-state residency were very detailed and we had heard we needed to follow them to the letter, which we did. I had to swear on a stack of bibles that we no longer had any residency connection to our former state, provide documentation of the day we became residents of the new state (the date of our townhouse closing), provide driver’s license, utility bills, tax bills, etc. for the new state.</p>
<p>Someone we know (with a child attending the same school) bought a two bedroom condo near the school, rented out one bedroom, continued to live in their home state, used the second bedroom when she visited her daughter (who lived in the dorms), and had an arrangement with her tenant that any mail delivered to the condo would be forwarded to her. I can only assume she was not truthful on the in-state application, and her child received in-state benefits.</p>
<p>Another person we know (with a child at the same school) lived out of state but rented a house in-state and the mom lived there with the child during school, but the dad remained in the home state to maintain the family business there and visited on weekends. She told the truth on the application - that she was physically living in-state with the child for the required time period, but did not abandon all ties to the home state - and they were denied in-state benefits.</p>
<p>Being a VA resident and taxpayer, if I knew of a sneaky way to get in-state tuition, pretty sure I wouldn’t share it … :)</p>
<p>But if you want to be creative, and are willing to move, there can be something of a work-around to lower the bite - but it still requires establishing domicile for something other than attending school - so no silver bullet here. But this is a “cheapskate” option.</p>
<p>In short, there’s a guaranteed admissions policy for qualified Virginia Community college graduates at pretty much every public 4-year college, including UVA, W&M, VT, etc. [Guaranteed</a> Admissions :: Northern Virginia Community College](<a href=“http://www.nvcc.edu/about-nova/directories--offices/administrative-offices/academic/guaranteed-adm/]Guaranteed”>http://www.nvcc.edu/about-nova/directories--offices/administrative-offices/academic/guaranteed-adm/)</p>
<p>If the parent(s) moved just before (CC) enrollment time, your child could attend, say, NVCC for the first two years, paying the OOS rate there the first year, in-state the second. Then transfer to UVA (or wherever) for the last two years.</p>
<p>Is this practical? Not for most people. Here’s the tuition-only breakdown, based on current published tuition rates:</p>
<p>year 1 - CC - 30 credits @ (OOS) $350.50 = $10,515
year 2 - CC - 30 credits @ (IS) $153.25 = $4597.50
year 3 - UVA IS tuition $11794
year 4 - UVA IS tuition $11794</p>
<p>Total - $38700.50</p>
<p>OOS - 4 years @ $25104 = $100,416</p>
<p>Not counting books, fees, living expenses. So, a savings of $61,715.50. </p>
<p>Theoretically, if you moved to Virginia along with your student that first year at a 4-year college, the second year (and on) might entitle you to in-state tuition at a 4-year college - but I wouldn’t count on it. Most of the state schools would be (rightly) highly skeptical of this, and I think they’d be inclined to turn you down.</p>
<p>The test isn’t simply living here for 12 months (or 24 months in some states) - it’s a demonstrated intent to stay here, indefinitely. That means moving, buying a place to live, full-time employment, voting, paying taxes, etc. </p>
<p>Like I said, not practical except, maybe, for some edge cases. But more practical than those listed in the article - most are wrong, or so severely limited in applicability, they might as well be.</p>
<p>If you want in-state tuition rates in a different state, well, move there …</p>
<p>Going to a Va. community college does greatly increase the chances for admission to UVa. However, using that angle for purely financial reasons may make less sense for an out of state family if they are eligible for need-based financial aid. UVa does provide good financial aid to out of state middle income families (although the outgoing chairwoman of the board would like to reduce it).</p>
<p>It seems likely to me that Ohio – a state that is losing population, and would love to use its university to attract young, educated people to the state, and whose neighboring states have made more or less equivalent investments in higher education – would have very different rules about residency than, say, California, Texas, or Florida. Or at least a different attitude about applying similar rules. I am certain that California would not have given residency status to taxguy’s daughter. Many states have a rule that if you are not a resident when you begin college, you can never be a resident (for college) without at least a year of non-registration.</p>
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<p>Your D was only “independent” because you pre-funded her, according to your earlier post:</p>
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<p>Misleading headline & disappointing article. Why is this even a “featured discussion”?</p>
<p>It only said “sneaky” so people would read the article. I was hoping for something more juicy, like stealing the identity of a state resident,</p>