<p>I'm not sure if this will be an issue in our family but I thought it might be worth asking here just in case.</p>
<p>Let's say you want to attend a state university in a state other than your own. And let's also say that you want to do a gap year where you might actually work for a living. </p>
<p>Could you move to the state you are interested in, work, pay taxes, etc. and qualify for in-state tuition rates?</p>
<p>It depends. If you are under age 24, not married, not in grad school, not in the military (or a veteran), you don’t have a child for whom you provide more than half of their support, then you will be considered a dependent student.</p>
<p>For most state U purposes, if you are a dependent student you are a resident where your parents have their primary resident.</p>
<p>A gap year will not necessarily help you as a undergraduate.</p>
<p>State schools have instate tuition discounts because they are supported by state residents who pay taxes. Why do out-of-state people who want to attend them see this as unfair? It’s not that the out-of-state students are paying too much; they are still getting a good education at a fair price. Being kind to in-state students is not being mean to out-of-state ones.</p>
<p>Sybbie, I don’t think that is correct. It’s a free country. Once you are 18, you have the right to move wherever you want. If you are gainfully employed and earning enough money to provide more than half of your support and clearly move your domicile to that new state, once you’ve met the requirements, I don’t see how a state can deny you residency. Once you’ve met that half support test, I don’t think your parents can claim you as a dependent anymore either. </p>
<p>Sybbie, I thought that the requirements you mention are for qualifying for federal financial aid. I think your parent’s income still rules there until you are 24 or get married, regardless of your dependency status. </p>
<p>Someone correct me if I’m wrong.</p>
<p>Gosh, I didn’t interpret bird rock’s question as trying to scam in-state tuition without properly meeting the legal requirements. And the correct answer is, every state’s legal requirements are different. So bird rock, the most authoritative answer will be found by starting on the website of the state U your student is interested in attending. Good luck!</p>
<p>Because public universities are asked this (OP’s) question repeatedly, I would be very surprised if most did not have something similar to this on their webpages:
[UW</a> Residency - Understanding Washington State Residency](<a href=“Residency for Tuition Purposes - Office of the University Registrar”>Residency for Tuition Purposes - Office of the University Registrar)</p>
<p>If you drill down, you can get to the very specific requirements that a student must fulfill to obtain residency for the University of Washington. Are you not finding something similar at the school(s) you are looking at, bird rock?</p>
<p>CRD,</p>
<p>You are right that it is a free country and you can move and live wherever you like. However for financial aid purposes, you can hold a job and live separately from your parents but you are considered a dependent student unless you meet one of the following requirements:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It does not matter if your parents do not claim you on their taxes. These things usually go hand in hand since most students are not independently wealthy, they will depend on their parents to pay tuition making them dependent on their parents to attend school. The students state of residency is where their parents live. Some students can and will be granted in-state tuition for scholarship purposes and for some grad school programs. </p>
<p>You cannot get state residency for the sole purpose getting in-state tuition. If you could, every parent would set their child up in any state for a year just to get in-state tuition.</p>
<p>attached, pleas find the link to the college board guide to state residency</p>
<p>[Guide</a> to State Residency](<a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/testing/international/state]Guide”>Higher Education Professionals | College Board)</p>
<p>For example: residency requirements for North Carolina and Michigan</p>
<p>University of Michigan</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>North Carolina</p>
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</p>
<p>Backing up Sybbie with another example. Here is UCSC’s (these are the same for the other UCs as well as the CSUs if I recall correctly):</p>
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</p>
<p>Emphasis mine. And that “or a parent” bit does seem to contradict things, but it is a reference to using that parent’s residency after the child has turned 18. If you look further down on the residency page, you find this:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Sources:
[UCSC</a> General Catalog 2010-12 - Appendixes](<a href=“http://reg.ucsc.edu/catalog/html/appendixes.html#who]UCSC”>http://reg.ucsc.edu/catalog/html/appendixes.html#who)
[UCSC</a> General Catalog 2010-12 - Appendixes](<a href=“http://reg.ucsc.edu/catalog/html/appendixes.html#requirements]UCSC”>http://reg.ucsc.edu/catalog/html/appendixes.html#requirements)
[UCSC</a> General Catalog 2010-12 - Appendixes](<a href=“http://reg.ucsc.edu/catalog/html/appendixes.html#spec_rules]UCSC”>http://reg.ucsc.edu/catalog/html/appendixes.html#spec_rules)</p>
<p>Yeah, we’re definitely not looking to scam anyone, just wondering what the rules are. But it sounds like one of the common requirements is that you not come into the state with the intent of acquiring an education. Which is a little funny and it certainly discriminates in favor of the people willing to lie. Or the people who don’t intent to go on to higher education when they are 18. We don’t want none of your kind around here, you, you student, you. </p>
<p>And that thing about 24 years old, sounds like that’s not really a part of this issue. If I get it, that’s more about federal financial aid.</p>
<p>My niece moved to Tennessee to attend school part-time/work part-time. She was considered a resident after about 6 months. Probably depends on how much abuse there has been on residential tuition. </p>
<p>Years ago, when California had free tuition for residents, there were huge numbers of college kids moving to CA to attend school.</p>
<p>^ No, the age 24 standard is not just about financial aid. It’s about who is entitled to the steep tuition discount that in-state students get. Taxpayer-supported colleges and universities—especially the best ones—are going to be very hard-nosed about this. They don’t want to give the discount to someone who came to the state just to get an education. And they don’t want to count as a state resident someone who came to the state a year (or two) early just to get the tuition discount. That’s the reason for the age 24 cut-off that many public universities use for purposes of determining residency (see, e.g., Michigan residency requirements in post #7); it’s going to be the rare bird who decides to move to a state and work for 6 years in order to qualify for the in-state tuition discount, and even if they did, they’d have pretty well “gone native” by then—and paid enough state taxes that they’d have earned the right to in-state tuition.</p>
<p>Generally, though, it’s not a hard-and-fast rule that your residency follows your parents’ up until age 24; it’s just a presumption. It may be possible to demonstrate to the university’s satisfaction that 1) you came to the state for reasons other than getting an education there, and 2) you were truly financially independent of your parents for the required period, which varies somewhat from state to state. But if you actually did come to the state with the intention of establishing residency for tuition purposes, you’d need to lie to meet that standard; the school is going be skeptical, and the burden is on you to prove you had some other intent, which may not be easy. That should be enough to discourage most students from trying.</p>
<p>To repeat myself, it’s a state-by-state thing. Everyone’s offering their own experiences, which is instructive, but not determinative of bird rock’s student’s outcome…which is solely dependent on what the state in question requires.</p>
<p>First Google hit–a decent overview:</p>
<p>[FinAid</a> | In-State Tuition and State Residency Requirements](<a href=“http://www.finaid.org/otheraid/stateresidency.phtml]FinAid”>http://www.finaid.org/otheraid/stateresidency.phtml)</p>
<p>FWIW, what you described would be close to enough to get you in-state residency for Texas colleges. (You don’t need to be financially independent.) There would just be a few extra steps to take.</p>
<p>This really varies from state to state.</p>
<p>The University of Texas website even points OOS students to the rules for getting in-state residency status. My son should be able to get in-state status starting his sophomore year. He’s the first member of the fourth generation in our family to attend UT, and his grandfather has been a professor there since 1965, so I don’t mind that they’ll let him do this!</p>
<p>My neighbor’s daughter is 20 years old and an undergrad student. She attends school in Utah and her parents live in Pennsylvania. The only thing she had to do to get Utah residency (and yes she did this because her parents were having a very difficult time with the tution her freshman year) is move her to an off-campus apartment with a one or two-year lease and transfer her driver license to Utah. After 6 months she was granted in-state tuition. Not sure about other states, but that’s all she had to do. She wasn’t even working, although she works now. She had to stay in the apartment for the entire 6 months, which at that time meant she couldn’t go home to Pennsylvania for the summer. That was the toughest part for her…to be on campus all summer without classmates, friends or family.</p>
<p>In Maryland, you only need to be physically resident for 3 months in order to get in-state/in-county rates at the community colleges, but you do have to demonstrate that you are financially independent. Generally speaking, this would require evidence that a student has been providing more than 50% of his/her own support for 12 months. There are other things that are also taken into consideration. The link is about half-way down this page: [Montgomery</a> College Catalog](<a href=“http://cms.montgomerycollege.edu/EDU/Plain.aspx?id=2070]Montgomery”>http://cms.montgomerycollege.edu/EDU/Plain.aspx?id=2070)</p>
<p>It is not even a state by state thing, but a school by school thing. However, most schools that have a sizable OOS population want that premium and are not particularly generous about relinquishing it. As the others have thoroughly presented, it’s pretty much where your parents primary residence is that determines your state residency. And at many schools, they will have to have had that residency for a full year. One of the admission directors at UMICH had to pay OOS rates for her kids until s/he got that one year residency requirement under her belt==I spoke to her personally. </p>
<p>Now as I stated in another post, there are colleges that are not strict about residency requirements and will simply ask for the students address and if they live full time in the state. If the answer is yes, then they get state residency. This happened to one of our cousins who moved in with us some years ago. He took some community college courses and though the state requirement was a years residency there, that was not how the bursar’s office worked. He lived here and that was all it took. But that is not the case in most of the flagship schools. Many are very rigorous and vigorous about enforcing their state residency rules. Once you get to a school, or if you have insider info on a school, that can be established as to how the state residency situation is handled.</p>
<p>There was a situation recently where an illegal immigrant who was going to a state school was “caught” is some unrelated situations, and it turned out that she was paying in state rates despite the fact that the rules for the school stated clearly that she was supposed to be paying OOS rates. There was a big stink about that. The school acknowledged that it did not enforce the instate/OOS rules that it had on its books as it was primarily a commuter school, and they had no mechanism in place to investigate who was not in state unless they specifically said so. What is not advisable to do is to lie on these forms, because that can get you in trouble if the issue arises, and not only is not a right thing to do, it can cause you problems in the future for certain opportunities.</p>
<p>Happymom, it does depend on the college. UMD College Park is quite stringent about OOS status and is vigilant about it. If you look at their site that addresses getting state residency, it is not easy to get around their rules.</p>