Going Far Away on Low Income

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Hello All,
I am an uprising senior in HS, and I am currently live in Texas. All academics aside, a few of the schools I am interested in applying to are in Pennsylvania (Carnegie Mellon), Tennessee (Vanderbilt), Louisiana (Tulane), and possibly California (USC). </p>

<p>My family is super low income (under 40,000), and I am hoping for a generous need based financial aid package (in combination with academics/music). If I do decide to attend a University outside of Texas (I will be applying to several in Texas), how am I going to pay for the plane ticket/bus ride/train/gas for car/ANYTHING to get myself home for the holidays and summer?</p>

<p>Amongst a plethora of other concerns related to going "too far away" (as my mother lovingly calls it), how do other students handle/deal with going to a University/College that is not in their state or is "far" away? Does anyone have any experience with this that can help me? I hear of students going out of state all the time, how do they manage?</p>

<p>Any help/insight would be greatly appreciated.</p>

2

<p>My wife went to her school 2000 miles away on a bus.</p>

3

<p>In my experience, schools will budget according to the actual expense from your home, but will short you on this, maybe by assuming fewer trips than you are likely to take.
The psychological element may be more important. How comfortable are you with being far away from home? Sometimes you don’t know until you do it.</p>

4

<p>You’ll likely have to limit how often you come home. Come home for Christmas break since it’s typically long, spring break, and summer. Stay there and go to a friend’s house for Thanksgiving, fall break, and any other short breaks.</p>

<p>Other than that, apply to as many school as you like that you can afford to apply to (I’m assuming you don’t want to pay too many application fees, so try to find many you like that are free to apply to). Fill out all financial aid forms and you should get need-based aid with that income. Also, if you have good grades, apply for merit scholarships.</p>

<p>Since you mention music, that could get you more $. If you can get need-based aid, merit money with good grades and ACT/SAT, plus a music scholarship, you should be doing well I would think. </p>

<p>Another idea- maybe consider schools where you’re quite a bit above the average for grades, GPA, ACT, etc. and you’ll increase the amount of merit aid you’ll likely get. Not sure where you fall academically for those schools you mentioned, so no idea what you’d get for merit aid.</p>

<p>Also, for traveling home, plane tickets would be very expensive. However, a bus or train isn’t bad. I’ve looked into those options too for myself this fall. I’m from MN and going to Illinois, and if the plane ticket rates go way up, I may take a bus or train too. </p>

<p>Another thing- maybe there’d be other people from your state at the college that you could carpool home and share the price of gas. Check if there are people at the college from your state.</p>

<p>Also, I’d recommend finding some in-state schools as a back up in case you end up not finding enough money (if you don’t get as much need-based aid and scholarships as expected). You need a Plan B just in case.</p>

5

<p>Airline ticket prices can vary depending on the level of competition on the route. If several airlines serve your home and school airports, flights are likely to be much less expensive than if one airline or only a few airlines serve the airport(s) convenient to your home and school.</p>

<p>For example, a check on [KAYAK</a> - Cheap Flights, Hotels, Airline Tickets, Cheap Tickets, Cheap Travel Deals - Compare Hundreds of Travel Sites At Once](<a href=“http://www.kayak.com%5DKAYAK”>http://www.kayak.com) for a round trip about two weeks out, I got $241 for Dallas (DFW or DAL) to Los Angeles (LAX, BUR, LGB, SNA, or ONT), but $430 for Lubbock (LBB) to Los Angeles.</p>

<p>You also need to consider that different times of day or days of week can be priced differently. For example, friday, sunday, and monday are often busier and more expensive. Holidays can also affect when people want to fly and how airlines price tickets.</p>

6

<p>There is a website that active college students can use that gave my daughter some good deals. Maybe Google it?
I can’t recall the name, and probably couldn’t patch in the website here if I could. If you are interested you could message me and I could find out the name.</p>

7

<p>We are not low income, but my D only comes home at Christmas and summer. We meet at nearby family for Thanksgiving.</p>

8

<p>* how am I going to pay for the plane ticket/bus ride/train/gas for car/ANYTHING to get myself home for the holidays and summer?</p>

<p>*</p>

<p>Although schools supposedly budget travel in their COAs, the way that travel often really gets covered is thru “Student summer contribution”…after all, you wouldn’t get student loan money until after school starts (if there is a positive balance)…and you wouldn’t get W-S money until later.</p>

<p>Therefore…here’s a possible strategy.</p>

<p>1) This summer, get yourself a summer job and set aside some money. Any money you save from this summer’s job, should be used up by the time you file FAFSA…so either buy school stuff, dorm stuff, new computer, school clothes, etc before filing FAFSA…or have your parents put your savings into THEIR acct so it won’t hurt your EFC. </p>

<p>2) Get a job next summer and save for 2 reasons…for airfares for fall arrival, Christmas, …and for “pocket money” for the school year.</p>

<p>3) Hopefully, you’ll get work study. if so, set aside a bit to pay for your plane ride home in the spring. If you don’t get work-study, you’ll need to get a regular part time job of a few hours a week.</p>

<p>That said, be sure that you have your financial safety schools in place. Make sure all costs are covered for those schools. If you have high stats, then there are schools that will give you large merit. Consider some of those.</p>

9

<p>Thanksgiving tends to be the most expensive time to fly home. For me and what I’ve found for flights this fall, it will cost me $375 or more for Thanksgiving, but only $250 as a of now (may go up as time gets closer) for near Christmas (school gets out early enough that I will be able to go home a little before).</p>

<p>Check flight times, try to be flexible when you fly and that may lower the rate.</p>

<p>If you can wait til last minute flights, then something to check on is AirTran’s flight deals. One of my sister’s friends who flies all the time suggested that they have some really cheap deals for college students, but you have to wait til last minute to get them, so depends on when you can get it.</p>

10

<p>Back in the last century, when I was in college 900 miles from home, only people who lived within about four hours by car or train went home for Thanksgiving. Everyone else managed to collect an invitation for Thanksgiving dinner from friends or extended-family in the area. Professors and alums in the area had people over for dinner, the international students’ coordinator planned a dinner, Hillel/Catholic Students/fill-in-denomination-here planned a dinner. </p>

<p>If you are sociable, you will make friends with someone who has somewhere to go for all of the school holidays. If you are a good guest, you will be invited back. My roommate (1200 miles from home) and I spent multiple holidays with one friend’s family. By the time we graduated, they truly were our own family as well. Nearly 40 years later, we still are in touch with them.</p>

11

<p>I budgeted the tickets, went somewhere by car for spring break, and worked full-time over my winter break to fund my plane tickets to and from campus. My roommate was able to take buses from MN to Philly fairly cheaply to get to and from school.</p>

12

<p>For your regular monthly expenses you might also want to consider that urban school activities may involved more going out to eat and to clubs/movies etc. which will cost money. In some of the more rural liberal arts schools you won’t have these expenses. Also examine how the meal plans work so you don’t have extra costs associated with food. Some of the rural liberal arts schools have inexpensive buses at holidays to the closest big cities (Boston and New York from the northeast schools, for example) and you could fly from there finding, hopefully, some decent fares. Maybe look at the Claremont schools which are a bit closer than than Northeast…Final note----you might find that airfares from where you are to New York, Boston or Chicago are just as cheap as getting to Nashville. The fares aren’t always distance based.</p>