Hi all.
If you’ve read from my other posts, you’ll notice that I’ve applied to Virginia Tech, and I’ll be hearing back from them in March.
In my situation, I moved to California in August to attend UC Davis but recent circumstances have led me to decide to return to VA in May/June. Fortunately, my father insists that no matter what he will pay for my college. However, his planned method of paying will be through funneling the funds through a bank account under my name. Additionally, he intends on splitting the costs of college with my grandparents, meaning they will pay for room & board and my father will tackle everything else.
A little bit of my background before I continue, I lived in Virginia for 18 years. My grandparents currently reside in the state and have been for many decades. Even my father lived there for awhile, too. I attended school (Preschool to high school) in the northern region as well, graduating with an advanced diploma last June.
So, all of this leads me to many questions, and I suppose the best way to ask them is in a list!
Your opinion--would I be considered in-state or out-of-state for VT?
Because I am technically paying for college myself, would that make me an independent?
Based on question #2, what do I put for FAFSA? My father's information? Claim my own independence?
Is it even possible to split the college costs as stated above? Again, how does this play into FAFSA?
Lastly, would I be awarded scholarships?
Thank you in advance! I appreciate any help given!
Include on your FAFSA the financial information of any custodial parent(s). This appears to be at least your father.
Any money your grandparents give to you or use to pay college expenses on your behalf must be reported on FAFSA as your untaxed income for the year in which it was given/paid.
I’m confused. Where do your PARENTS live now? Their state of residence would be yours.
No. For financial aid purposes you will be considered a dependent student. Your parent income and assets will need to be included on your FAFSA and (if required) Profile forms.
Are your parents married? You don’t mention your mom at all. The FAFSA requires all custodial parent info to be listed in the parent section. Your info will be in the student section.
If your parents are not married, please clarify that.
Why doesn’t your parent pay the college directly for the costs they intend to pay? Same with your grandparent.
Now how would we be able to answer that question? You haven’t given us one speck of information about your stats. But I will say…transfer students don’t usually receive the same merit scholarships as entering freshman.
Now…my questions.
Do either of your parents have current residency in Virginia?
Were you an OOS student while in California?
Where is your mother?
Are your parents divorced? Where do each of them live?
This part needs more explanation. Do you mean something like, “a business he owns is going to pay me wages that happen to equal tuition,” or “a business he owns is going to issue me a 1099 for an amount that happens to equal tuition,” or some other sort of tax related scheme?
I apologize for the lack of information. As a stressed student, I didn’t think clearly enough to provide enough detail about my circumstances.
This also will be my response to your question #3. Only my mother has residency in Virginia. She raised me until I was 12. After many familial disputes and conflicts, she surrendered her custody of me. My father has full custody, and I have not spoken to my mother since. He recently bought a house in California and we moved out here together to (originally) obtain residency after 1 year passes. Obviously, that isn't the case anymore but I hope this answers your question.
This question confuses a bit since being in California would imply that I would be an OOS student. To clarify though, I applied to UC Davis last year while living in VA as a permanent resident, was accepted, and moved shortly after to CA in August. I later applied to VT in January, but I still live with my father in CA. It has been 6 months since our move.
They never got married, had me when they were young and simply broke up.
I have a few comments regarding your other responses.
For some reason my dad believes it would be beneficial if I handled the expenses on my own. Probably thinking it would be good to have the experience and learn from my mistakes because he also intends on providing additional money using the same bank account just for my own use (clothes, food, entertainment, etc).
My bad, I was asking that question in a general sense since I had the notion that colleges don't give scholarships to OOS students. That was the case for the UC schools, at least. I suppose question #5 would also be based on question #1.
On a side note, wow thank you for the hasty responses! Again, I really appreciate it. @BelknapPoint@thumper1
Omg, every time I refresh the page there are multiple responses. It’s hard to keep up so I’m sorry for the delay.
@thumper1 So on the VT application, or Common App I’m not sure which one, they provided spaces to input multiple addresses and the time period for each. I gave them a total of 3 in which 1) I lived with my mother (until 2012 or so), 2) I lived with my dad in VA (until August 2018), and 3) my current address in CA (present).
The ‘vacation’ note was my way of saying that I realize I now live in California, but because I’ve only resided here for 6 months or so, I jokingly stated that I hoped they would treat it LIKE a vacation. In other words, the hope is I have a case to be made in terms of what my residency should be.
@allyphoe I’m not entirely sure how it will be done. I believe the plan is to provide me a monthly “allowance”, if you will, that I then use to partially pay for college and the rest for daily expenses such as food. And this by no means is coming from a personal business he owns. Just from his own income.
It concerns me when you mark this as a “tax related scheme”. I’m not sure if you are implying that this would be illegal or if you believe we have false intentions. If you do, please state so because I’m very clueless when it comes to the financing process and I’d like to know if something like what my father intends on doing is not allowed.
If he’s just giving you money, there’s nothing inappropriate about that. But you aren’t “paying for college with your own money.” What you described in your follow up is a reasonably common way parents pay for college.
Your custodial parent is your dad. His legal residence sounds like it will be California...which isn’t going to help you with VA residency.
You need to find out your residency status for tuition purposes in VA. It is very very possible you will be viewed as an OOS student....with OOS costs to attend.
You need to figure out what you can afford to pay annually. Will your father be helping you with college costs? Your mother? For aid, you can count on a $6500 Direct Loan, and that is it. How will you find the remaining costs?
Your grandparents are not your legal guardians. Yes, you can live with them in VA, but this won’t help you establish VA residency to have instate tuition status. Your custodial parent lives in CA.
If you stayed in CA, would you have instate tuition status for the 2019-2020 academic year? Have you found that out?
But the biggest question is who is going to pay your college bills?? And how much can they pay.
Thank you for the advice, @mom2collegekids and @sybbie719. I had no idea that I’d receive this much help, so again to everyone I really appreciate it.
I have a few things to clarify to everyone:
I’m not a transfer student. While I am enrolled in UC Davis, my attendance has been deferred until this upcoming Fall 2019 term so that I may obtain in-state tuition… That said, I do see VT not awarding many scholarships even for freshmen.
My dad is definitely not moving back to VA. He bought a house here, but he also dislikes living in the state overall.
I’m not sure if my mom would alter the situation. She doesn’t have custody of me (I’m 18 too). I also haven’t spoken with her in 7 years so I doubt she’d even want to help. We didn’t end on good terms. She has 2 kids of her own, I’m sure she’s busy.
7. My father has assumed responsibility for the expenses. My grandparents have only offered some sum of financial support (i think about 10k) but they will not be continually paying for tuition. They did say they would pay for college, but like I said, my dad wants this responsibility.
Again, thank you! I seriously can’t emphasize this anymore, haha. I don’t have anyone else to talk to about my situation. I have friends but the circumstances are simply so complicated that there’s not much advice that can be given. My family wouldn’t be pleased to hear about this change. I hate that in a way I’m letting them down, but they definitely couldn’t and wouldn’t assist with this.
How much can your dad pay annually for you to attend college? $30,000? $60,000? How much?
You need to know how much you will have to cover anything not offered to you in terms of financial aid.
I just visited Flagler college in St. Augustine FL. It is a small school but very modestly priced for a small LAC. Their application deadline is March 1. Cost of attendance is under $35,000 a year…total…and that is without any aid at all.
If looking for small lower OOS cost LACs, there are Truman State and Minnesota Morris. For engineering, there is SD Mines.
But if you do have California residency, there are many in state options, including UCs, CSUs, and starting at a community college and then transferring to a UC or CSU.
@thumper1 I completed my FAFSA today with my dad. Our EFC is ~$21k, which I assume is an ANNUAL expected measure of family contribution. If this is the case, then that estimate is wrong in reality. The reality is my dad can comfortably afford to pay ~$10k a year because of the mortgaging costs of our home. I was wondering if FAFSA would inquire about mortgage costs, but it explicitly said to include only those of other homes that we do not live in, as well as other assets like investments and businesses.
With that being said, VT would certainly be out of our price range if OOS. Either way, whether if I go to VT as an instate student or attend another college, my father is expecting to incur debt. I’ve offered to take on the debt under my name because I worry about the stress it might impose upon him, but he refused.
Yes, the EFC per FAFSA you received is for the 2019-2020 academic year only.
A couple of things.
The FAFSA NEVER considers the mortgage related to your primary residence, your home. Everyone has some kind of expense for their lodging...rent or a mortgage. So...the FAFSA doesn’t consider this at all. It just doesn’t matter in terms of the FAFSA EFC calculation.
The FAFSA computes what you could pay per year based on the financial data you entered...income, assets, number in family, number in college. The FAFSA EFC should be viewed as the MINIMUM you will be paying. Neither the California public universities or VT meet full need. It is very possible that the SCHOOLS will actually have a higher family contribution than $21,000 per year.
You, the student, cannot take on debt in your own name in the amounts it appears you need. That amount is limited to the $5500 Direct Loan. Any additional loans would need to be either taken by your parent or co-signed by them.
Yes…that is your Direct Loan limit for freshman year.
I have to ask…did you complete a FAFSA for THIS year even though you are taking a gap year? Also, for future reference, this form and the Profile if needed are available for completion October 1. Why did you wait so long to get this done?
I graduated high school last June. Right now, I’m IN my gap year. When my father and I were still following the original plan to attend UCD, we could afford to wait on filling out the FAFSA because on my portal it said I had until June. You might still be inclined to ask the same question–“If the portal opened up in October, still, why wait until now?” Well, we moved to California in August. The house underwent some renovations for awhile, and we even did a lot of work ourselves to save money (at the expense of time). In September and November, we visited our family in SoCal. Then my dad broke his wrist and I had to take care of him for several weeks. FAFSA was on my mind for awhile until I eventually forgot about it. These are all excuses, but the truth is my dad and I had other priorities and things on our mind.
After I applied to VT and Hollins, well that all changed. Now everyday I login to CC to check recent threads, I’m learning more about the finance expenses of each option available to me–I became more active, really.
So to answer your question… I decided to apply to VT and Hollins only recently. For VT, the FAFSA is due on March 1st. But for Hollins, it is due today. I only took so long because I had to work up the courage to tell my dad everything on a day when he was not moody. Then I waited even longer to give him time to accept that I might move. Finally, I was able to ask for his help to file the FAFSA, as he now knew that we were not completing it early for UCD, but for VT and Hollins.