How much are you saving now?
How many younger siblings and their ages?
Are the rainy day funds all gone?
Is it necessary to save for retirement if your husband will get a military pension?
How do you expect your son to pay for college when he can only borrow $5500? Are you going to take Parent Plus loans or co-sign private loans?
What is your AGI?
GI education benefits from your husband for your son?
He may be eligible for University of Houston’s Tier One Scholarship. It’s not automatic but his stats may make him competitive, although it looks like he must submit a SAT score. The average SAT of last year’s scholars was 1400. Has he taken the SAT?
It says the ACT is also accepted. There’s a chance he’s just outside the rank requirements, though.
I didn’t say that the list would be presented for approval, but merely to share with his parent any schools that he feels could represent possible options.
My thought is that the parent who feels guilty about the no-funding, is also feeling like she wants to control the process. To me, that’s a recipe for more conflict and resentment.
Working together, it’s more likely that they can try to locate finance options for specific schools, i.e. scholarships, accelerated degrees, work study, grants, etc.
The parent has put the skids on this application process. ND or bust. And no financial support.
I hope I’m reading that incorrectly from the OP…and she will clarify.
But if indeed, the parents won’t pay any money for college…it doesn’t matter who drives the search. It will come up empty.
NDMom123, don’t post back until you have run the NPCs. We have no idea if what you call a nice life, in ND, still falls into nice financial aid territory. We do understand various reasons you may not qualify for the tuition discount at either school. Are you even full time?
It’s usually kids who write about their parents who won’t help, how they seem to willfully constrain them. We sometimes tell them to search hard for aid, for merit scholarships, look into local cheap options, etc. Rarely do we get the chance to say to their parents: research the realities, the costs, where he has a shot, what aid you do qualify for. And consider how you can support him. Believe in him.
“Out of state big football flagships are your WORST financial decision ever. They typically have the highest costs for out of state students, except for those which have merit-aid or tuition-break programs that your son might qualify for.”
I don’t agree with this generalization. Football flagships vary in OOS sticker price just like other categories of schools do. Iowa State, for example, is relatively reasonable. So are Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Montana State, and some others. Even Ohio State has a total COA of under $40k, which is pretty good in today’s climate.
These don’t help the OP; I’m mentioning this for the general readership.
Your son’s desire to get as far as possible from his home state is perfectly normal. Do encourage him to apply to UND and NDSU. There are automatic merit-based scholarships for students with certain test scores and grade ranges. Good friends of mine in Grand Forks had kids who applied to a bazillion other places, but ended up at UND because of costs, and they are now thriving there. The Fargo/West Fargo/Moorhead area is bigger and livelier than Grand Forks/East Grand Forks. Have him give that a good long look.
If he has the grades and test scores, there may be merit money that will give him more options. Have him look at the yolasite link that was shared by an earlier poster.
Your son needs to know what you can afford to contribute each year. If all you can pay is for his books, well then that is the way it is. Run the Net Price Calculators with your son so that he knows for dead certain that need-based aid is not going to bring the costs down to what your family can afford. We did that. It helped everyone understand how things were going to need to work.
I gather that you are a distance ed instructor for UND and U of MD. Nice gig because of the geographical flexibility, but adjunct salary and lousy benefits. Also, given UND’s financial issues right now, I wouldn’t expect any improvement in benefits or salary there. 
Two very old, but possibly helpful threads for you and your son to look at. The scholarships probably don’t exist any more, but the research strategies are timeless:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/148852-what-i-ve-learned-about-full-ride-scholarships-p1.html
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/291483-update-on-what-i-learned-about-free-ride-scholarships-p1.html
Wishing you all the best!
@Hanna Fair point on the football schools – not all states treat nonresidents as total cash cows. The difference in sticker prices for in-state and out-of-state is often compounded by the loss of financial aid as state schools reserve their best grants and scholarships for in-state students. However, the OP is not apparently not applying for aid nor providing her son with any money.
I would love to see son create an account and post his side of the story!
Add a loan and a job to one of the options below and he will be in good shape.
University of Louisiana-Monroe
Application Deadline: Dec 3rd
Award: Full Tuition + Fees + $5000 housing stipend
Requirements: 3.0 GPA, 30 ACT or 1320 SAT (CR+M)
http://www.ulm.edu/scholarships/freshmen.html
http://www.ulm.edu/scholarships/outofstate.html
Note: First come, first served as funds are available
University of Arkansas at Monticello
Application Deadline: March 1st
Award: Full Ride (Tuition+Room+Board)
Requirements: 3.0 GPA and Top 10% Rank, 30 ACT
Award: Full Tuition+Room
Requirements: 3.0 GPA, 27 ACT
http://www.uamont.edu/pages/admissions/institutional-scholarships/
University of Arkansas – Little Rock
Application Deadline: Priority, Dec 1st; Final, Feb 1st
Award: Full Tuition+ ($10,000/year + OOS Tuition Waiver)
Requirements: 3.5 GPA, 30 ACT or 1330 SAT (CR+M)
http://ualr.edu/scholarships/academic/
University of Louisiana-Monroe
Application Deadline: Dec 3rd
Award: Full Tuition + Fees + $5000 housing stipend
Requirements: 3.0 GPA, 30 ACT or 1320 SAT (CR+M)
http://www.ulm.edu/scholarships/freshmen.html
http://www.ulm.edu/scholarships/outofstate.html
Note: First come, first served as funds are available
University of Alabama-Huntsville
Application Deadline: June 1st
Award: Full Tuition
Requirements: 3.5 GPA, 30 ACT or 1330 SAT (CR+M)
http://www.uah.edu/admissions/undergraduate/financial-aid/scholarships/merit-tuition-scholarships
University of Alabama-Birmingham
Application Deadline: May 1st (December ACT/SAT)
Award: $15,000/year (Full tuition for up to 25 credits per year)
Requirements: 3.5 GPA, 30 ACT or 1330 SAT (CR+M)
http://www.uab.edu/students/paying-for-uab/scholarships/item/570-act-gpa-based-scholarships
There are even more options if he were open to an hbcu - but that might culture shock for a kid a from ND.
“Even Ohio State has a total COA of under $40k, which is pretty good in today’s climate.”
Sorry @Hanna - way off, trust me, D was really motivated to go there and we are HUGE Buckeye fans having grown up just outside of Columbus: From the OSU site:
Non-Ohio resident: Living on or off campus
Category Cost
Tuition and fees $33,334
Room and board/living $12,142
Books and supplies $1,234
Miscellaneous/personal $5,486
Total $52,196
You are correct that costs will vary, but ,many of the big name OOS flagships we found to all be in this ballpark.
Huh. Are you looking at U.S. undergraduate costs? Did they really raise tuition $6000 (almost 25%) in just one year? If so, what a shame. That’s also a LOT for misc/personal. I checked http://undergrad.osu.edu/money-matters/tuition-and-fees.html before I posted:
"Tuition and fees
Estimated costs for the 2015-2016 academic year
(two semesters of full-time enrollment)
Columbus campus: U.S. freshmen and transfer students
Billed expenses Ohio resident Nonresident
Tuition and fees $10,037 $27,365*
Room and board** $11,666 $11,666"
Am I the only one who thinks OP isn’t for real?
What college professor is this clueless about college finances? When my husband was a professor, everyone discussed tuition, affordability, and their own abilities to send their children to college.
She may be an adjunct or similarly contingent. I could see that. They are often not plugged into the institution’s academic chatter. #beentheredonethat.
Utah has good opportunites, and likely he can get residency after a year. Wyoming would be a good choice, and while the WUE is competitive, the Rocky Mtn scholarship for a 30 ACT and a 3.5 gpa is the same benefit, 150% of instate tuition (which isn’t $5000 as stated above but more like $7000). Room and board is about $8000/ yr, so cheaper than most schools. There are a number of department scholaships, some alumni funded grants. Lots of work study jobs available and plenty of jobs in the community too. It’s a small town, but the football team is D1 and there is a lot of activity on campus and many activities in the area like hiking and kayaking.
There is one other program I can think of he might be interested in, and it is the Denver Safety Cadet program. Those chosen have their tuition paid to UC-Denver, Metro State or CC of Denver, and they work certain number of hours for either the Denver fire department, sheriff’s dept or police department (rotates). They get paid for 20/wk, at a pretty good salary for teenagers. I’m sure it is a lot of waving sticks to direct traffic and sweeping up around the fire house, but it pays the bills. No requirement that you join the fire or police dept, and no guarantee of being accepted into an academy, but certainly a leg up. I went for fingerprints once and the guy doing it was in the program, and the officer suprising had done the program too. Both raved about it. Metro State is D2 athletics, and the others just club, but all schools are in the area where the Broncos, Rockies, Av’s, and Nuggets play.
The OP writes like a young person.
OP, several people have asked about your husband’s GI Bill benefits, and you haven’t responded.
Those benefits can be gifted to any family member, or broken up to be used by multiple family members.
Since you are not contributing in any way to his expenses, and it’s all on him to get loans etc., I think you have to let him go. Let him go and be supportive of his choices because anything else is not helping him. He sounds like a smart and ambitious kid. I hope he finds something that will allow him to grow in the way he wants to grow. If it were my kid I’d be researching 2nd and 3rd tier large schools like crazy, hoping to get him scholarship money. He may be a good candidate for a military scholarship. You need to start googling.
@hanna and @NJFabFour According to this page, tOSU’s figures for 2016-2017 OOS students are about 40K total for tuition, room and board, another 4-5K for incidentals and books.
https://sfa.osu.edu/incoming-freshmen/about-aid/financial-aid-eligibility
Is there more to the story? What more is ther for him to learn other than $0 in college assistance from the parents?
Before now…did you say you would find college? Has there been a change in circumstances?
There are some good suggestions upstream for affordable options for him that are OOS and would not cost you anything but the transportation to get him there. Will you pay that?
Wyoming would present a lot of the same issues that OP’s son appears to want to distance himself from .