<p>Okay, right now I am at a community college, cheap, easy for the most part, and boring as **** with no social scene..</p>
<p>I am taking summer classes right now (2 of em, probably 2 more on second summer) and I went there all of last year. Now I planned on transferring to a 4 year school in the fall, for a chance at internships (I'm either going for bio (if I go for bio I'll be getting a masters in physical therapy) or computer science(hopefully become an administrator or something) possible athletics, establish relationships with organizations, chance to meet new people, and just have a college experience, as well as settle into the school instead of going for 2 years which I would probably be overloaded by it all. I feel if I stay another year at community college I will miss basically all of that.. As the school I goto EVERYONE just shows up for class then heads home, I've made class friends but noone I would actually enjoy hanging out with ect.. </p>
<p>Now the problem I'm having is this.. My parents combined income is ~120-130k? give or take on either end. I don't qualify for ANY financial aid, I have one sibling but he just doesn't goto college, so I now qualify for zero financial aid. PHEAA denied me ect.. Now the school I wanted to transfer to estimated that I would pay ~$20k per year, so that basically means I'd be around $60k in debt when I graduate? That just seems like it would ****ing suck.. I dont know, can anyone lay into me on this..</p>
<p>Broadening the college transfer search can result in additional merit aid or other awards based upon your GPA, interests, etc. Explore web-sites of many universities and colleges - many offer incentives to transfer students with certain GPA’s, interests, etc. Some of these various awards may assist with paying for college, along with work-study, loans, savings money over the summer and perhaps parental contributions. Also, apply for a variety of scholarships - local church, organizations, fastweb, etc. - can be cumbersome and time consuming to apply, but worthwhile - even small awards add up quickly.</p>
<p>How are your grades? Our State Us have transfer scholarships for students with good GPAs coming from CCs. Not massive amounts but $2-3k. Every little helps.</p>
<p>And if the schools COA is $20,000 that generally includes allowances for personal and miscellaneous expenses so you should be able to come in a little under that. With a job in the summer and part time in the schoolyear you can reduce your potential debt.</p>
<p>And as others have asked - with a $120 -130k income can’t your parents help out at all?</p>
<p>The school I want to goto is about 2 hours away so I can’t really commute. My grads are a little above a 3 overall (****ed up my micro class). </p>
<p>My parents want me to stay at the CC so I’m not sure how much they would be willing to pay if I transferred over. Perhaps I should see an adviser at the school I want to transfer to? (I’m already accepted and paid the deposit) I mean I planned on getting a job when I went to school, but it’s decently sized (~13k attendants) so I’m assuming I will have trouble doing that. </p>
<p>Also I thought Network Administrators was one job that would be pretty much impossible to ship overseas?</p>
That’s a conversation you need to have as soon as possible. You need to sell them on the benefits of attending a 4 year school - better classes, better students, better contacts, better job placement, etc. Then maybe they will help out. Even at only $5K/year, with working you can probably come out with less then $30K in loans, which is not crushing if you get a good job.</p>
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Did you mean you will have no trouble? Every school we visited said there were way more campus jobs available than students to fill them.</p>
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Not every job can be shipped overseas, but certainly many can. You should investigate the job market carefully before you commit to a major like this. At my company (I work in the high-tech, so it pains me to say this) we have one on-site IT person left; he no longer works for my company but works for the company we out-sourced our IT to, and all the other IT jobs were moved off-shore. This is in an office with 200+ people. Even a lot of our development jobs have been off-shored; the project I am working on now has developers on 3 continents.</p>
<p>You can’t out-source PT, and with the aging population this seems like a growth area, so the job prospects may be better. The one thing I have heard with PT is that the physical demands are so high you can’t do it forever.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t expect a summer job + work study to shave $20,000 off the total loan amount. Even a $10/hour full-time job (40 hours a week) over the summer would make the OP a little less than $5,000 before taxes, and at the same rate over 15 hours a week over the academic year he can expect to make a little over $2,000 before taxes each semester – for a total of maybe around $9,000 before taxes during the entire year. After you take out taxes and living expenses, that becomes less. Even over 3 years, I doubt the total amount a summer job and on-campus job would contribute to tuition and fees would add up to be $20,000, unless we’re talking about room and board.</p>
<p>Since you have already committed, though, of course you should work during the summer and academic year, and talk to your parents about help financing your degree. You will need their help anyway to obtain that many loans, because they won’t be available to you as an undergrad (Stafford is capped at much less than $20,000 a year for undergraduates). Also, there are scholarships out there for transfers, like Jack Kent Cooke.</p>
<p>And, I disagree that you should look at the job market before you commit to your major. College degrees rarely map perfectly onto future careers, and honestly this (College Confidential) is the only place on the 'net I’ve ever seen that puts so much emphasis on major BEFORE you even get to a 4-year college. A major should be something that you are genuinely interested in, that you can see yourself studying intensely for the next 3 years. If you want to major in computer science because you want it to lead directly to a job…well, that’s not good. But if you just like CS and want to explore it more, that’s the way you should see majors.</p>
<p>College isn’t really job training anyway; a lot of IT people and programmers didn’t even major in CS when they were in undergrad since you can learn the code/programming in your own time (and a lot of programmers I know tell me that - ex, it’s less helpful to earn a second bachelor’s in CS and more helpful to mess around with code on your own with a couple of books). Study what interests you - you can major in CS and to to physical therapy school; you can major in philosophy and go to PT school.</p>
<p>I was talking about over the remainder of his college time (3 years), not per year.</p>
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<p>No company I’ve worked for in the last 20 years would hire someone out of college for a development or IT position unless they had a technical degree of some sort. If your resume says “majored in Art History but learned to code on my own for fun” you will never make it past the initial 20-second screen or computer sift.</p>
<p>Reposted from another spot, but its appropriate here as well…</p>
<p>Beware of getting too narrowly focused on the school you want to attend. Find 6-10 schools to apply to. Make sure you have a combination of private and public schools. And above all, make sure they have strong financial track records… particularly strong % family need met. The calculation is based on need, but it is a very good indicator of how much money they come up with otherwise.</p>
<p>Also make sure you apply to several schools where you have a good chance of coming in the freshman class in the upper 50 to 25%.</p>
<p>Geographic distance will sometimes net you some money as well. Diversity often includes different parts of the country, not just ethnicity.</p>
<p>Perhaps staying at the CC to finish all your gen ed requirements isn’t a bad idea. Just don’t get more than two years worth of credits.</p>
<p>Have you discussed the finances of college with your parents? You need to do so…in fact, you should have DONE SO before you sent in your deposit. How did you think the bills were going to be paid?</p>