Any experience or advice on moving out of state as a family, getting residency as per the university conditions, and getting in state tuition? Senior S23 considering UIUC, Ohio State, Univ. of Cincinnati, Virginia Tech, CU Denver.
Look at the state of Utah for relatively lenient residency requirements.
Is this for a job transfer?
So are you planning to move to either Colorado, Illinois, or Virginia following your child ?
I’d look up the rules of each state.
Certainly it wouldn’t happen year one in most but if the family was established for a year, depending on the state, it might in year two.
You might look at schools where your student would qualify for large merit aid or an in state waiver as an alternative.
You can’t “follow” your child. You need to move as a family, establish residency per the requirement of the state, and then have your kid- as a legal resident- apply to college. An out of state kid whose family moves to follow the kid is… an out of state kid, until residency is established. Look up Utah- more lenient than other states…
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My understanding is that OH makes it difficult to gain residency for tuition purposes, unless you are moving a full year prior to your student graduating from HS, or are in the military. I believe that if you move after enrollment, you will not be granted instate tuition.
IL allows instate tuition after 12 months but there are a bunch of criteria that need to be met.
I would look very very closely into the residency requirements for tuition purposes as it can be different than general residency.
Check the rules in each state. At some places, if you start as an OOS student, that is your status until you graduate. At others, your status can change but you must follow the guidelines very carefully.
If you are hoping to gain instate status for freshman year, and your kid is a HS senior now…I think the new residency ship has sailed for 2023-2024.
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It has for Virginia anyway: you have to have been resident in VA for 12 months you can apply for domiciled status. However, an enrolled student can apply to have their status changed, although:
“If you enter an institution classified as an out-of-state student, you will be required to give clear and convincing evidence to rebut the presumption that you are in the state to attend school before a change of status will be granted.”
Basically, any state with a really good state university system (eg, CA, VA, IL, OH, NC, NY, etc.) is well used to people who try to game the system and have put barriers to slow you down in place.
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Hence the need to perhaps switch gears and find a large merit school if OP qualifies. Some offer OOS waivers like a Mizzou, FSU, or UGA to name a few (not easy to get).
Getting residency usually requires lots of proof of existence - income, utilities for a year. Even when a student can get on their own, it will still require evidence.
Not sure how flexible OPs list is or what the stats are but if low cost is an issue, this is likely not the right list although merit is possible at some - specifically the Ohio schools and CU Denver.
If costs matter, start with your state publics.
Or give us more detail, a desired cost and perhaps we can point you toward others.
Alternatively move, establish domicile, have your student get a job and take a gap year. Establish residency. Good luck.
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You have two Ohio colleges on your list. One Colorado and one Illinois.
You can’t move to all three states at the same time…
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If it was that easy, we all would of done it… Lol…
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There have been folks who have relocated to take advantage of instate college opportunities and cost. But they did this long before college applications were being sent.
Help me out folks…who is the poster who moved from CA to NC? Her kids went to undergrad, grad and medical schools in NC, I believe. Kat something.
It was @katwkittens that made that move.
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Paging @katwkittens so she can tell about getting instate tuition by relocating!
In states with popular universities, it’s something you’d have to do more than 2 years prior to the college application process. They require solid proof that you’ve lived in the state (2nd homes don’t count), have a driver’s license, pay taxes…it’s not something that can be done quickly. Like others said, if there were a secret door, we all would have found it by now. Additionally, even if you think you’ve met the standards, the state can deny the application and then you have go through an appeal process.
Florida gives out a few “grandparent waivers” to out of state students, but there are very specific criteria that the grandparent needs to meet (I don’t believe they can be “snowbirds”), and it’s not automatically given even when the criteria are met.
A better strategy would be for your child to apply to schools where they are at the very top of the stats, and hope that the school will offer them enough merit which would equate to what your in-state tuition value would be.
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Thank you all for the valuable input!
We did it; we moved from NC to SC, established residency and D20 received in-state base rates beginning fall of sophomore year. SC is very strict; while every state is different, these are the things we needed to do/provide:
- 1 year residency from closing date. We specifically closed spring of her senior year so we could have 1 year and 3 months before fall sophomore year bills would be due.
- Register all vehicles within 45 days of closing, had to submit copies
- change all licenses within 90 days of closing, had to submit copies
- provide closing statement from purchase of SC house and sale of NC house
- provide deed from house we sold in NC showing we were no longer the legal owners
- letter from DHs work stating he was a remote employee based in SC
- copy of SC and NC tax returns showing partial year dates that matched with closing documents
There may have been one or two other little things. It wasn’t hard, since I keep very well organized files, and we planned ahead to time the move that would allow us 12 months residency and 3 months cushion for processing. It was during covid, so everything was taking 3 times longer than it normally did. Hope this helps give you an idea of the types of requirements you may encounter depending on the state.
Edited to add: copies of W2s showing change of state income tax withholdings that matched timing of closings
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@Tigerwife92 Thank you so much for the detailed info on the steps you took! It will be very helpful in our journey.
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A few other thoughts:
D20 received the highest tier OOS merit scholarship her freshman year, so that allowed us time to move and establish residency. She could’ve kept it all 4 years, but we’d always planned on moving to SC when we retired. Since DD chose a SC school, we had no reason to stay in NC. We closed on our house here in SC in April of her senior year and listed our NC house in May, so we owned both for 2 months. It allowed us time to move everything down on the weekends. Our bank allowed us to put 5% down on the SC house and then recast the loan once we received the check from the sale of our NC house. The only stipulation was we had to hold the loan for 90 days before we were allowed to recast it. We recasted on day 91 
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I’d just note - they earned it for second year, not first.
And if you get OOS merit but then go in-state, that OOS merit will be gone - either eliminated or reduced.
When you factor in - selling your home (if you have one), moving your family, etc. - well there is a lot of other expense.
Are you hell bent on these schools or open to “affordable” alternatives - because if you give your stats to us, we might find suitable alternatives for you.
In our case it will be a rental to rental move, not sure if it will be considered a con…