What is this debt? Loans? In your name only from the school? What did your financial aid package look like from the school? (You don’t have to name the school if you don’t want to.) Please include the cost of attendance.
A parent who “forced” you to go to this school can’t help to pay for it in any way?
What are you doing now, since you left school? Are you working?
You are in more than “a bit of a pickle” and you need more help and information than you can get online, and not just from the “private uni” that has helped you get into this mess.
As suggested above, you can go to Legal Aid, you can go to a Clinic run by the local law school, or you can go visit your nearest state consumer protection office (find it [url=<a href=“https://www.usa.gov/state-consumer%5Dhere%5B/url”>https://www.usa.gov/state-consumer]here[/url]. Just go soon and get some advice. You are in a serious situation and you need some good advice from people who understand the situation better than we can with the partial information you have given.
Also: a credit card is NOT the solution. A credit card will charge you 18% interest on the amount you owe- and even if you were 18 I doubt that you could get that much credit.
@Madison85 asked you if your college is a for-profit scammy school, and you answered “no, it’s a private uni upsate”. FYI, a “private uni” can be a scammy school. It is not usual for a college to allow you to start the semester without having paid.
What’s the name of the “private uni upstate”?
Yes, please give the university’s name so that we can see what type of university it is (for profit or not for profit).