<p>Honey, chances are, you’ll break up. Think about yourself right now. Don’t make your decisions revolving around a boy. Make your own decisions for YOUR life. If he truly cares, he’ll be waiting for you when you are done with school.</p>
<p>Guys, she did say later that she and boyfriend are going to living in separate dorms freshman year. So that concern is taken care of. I think she’s trying to make intelligent decisions here and listen to our advice. I also think she -like most of us when we started the college search/application process- doesn’t really understand the reality of admissions and financial aid quite yet… but she’s done the right thing coming here looking for information :)</p>
<p>I do think that OP needs to run the Net Price Calculators for all schools she is interested in (OP, do you know how to do that? You will need your parents’ financial information, so best to sit down with them when you do the first one.) let us know if you would like some specifics on how to do this…</p>
<p>I’m also concerned about her assumption they will both get into, and be able to afford, the same school. OP, please have your boyfriend call the admissions office right away and explain his CC transcript and find out whether, as you seem to think, he will be considered a freshman applicant. If so, he needs to run the NPCs as well. If not, he will need to find out what the financial situation is for transfer students. You guys should figure this out ASAP since it will be a big factor in the process.</p>
<p>Are there any specifics about the college search/admissions/financial aid process that we can help you with?</p>
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<p>Great! Now take it a step further. It sounds like your boyfriend found his path and is well on his way - that’s good. Now, it’s your turn. Here’s the thing - you don’t need to be in lockstep with each other to be together. It’s okay if he doesn’t want to go to your college. Don’t force him to attend your school if it doesn’t suit him. Also, don’t go to a school that’s best for him if it’s not right for you.</p>
<p>You can try to look for colleges in the same general area. But now that you don’t plan on living in the same dorm, you can each seek out the best college/school/opportunity for yourselves. So, you limit your search to a geographic area but plenty of students and parents do that already.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>I think what OP is planning to do is just fine, though the price tag for two separate students at, say NKU is going to be about $40k for the two of them. Where they will get that kind of money may be an issue, though OP has indicated she is solid. Whether she truly has the money sewn up in guaranteed aid or not, we don’t know. She acknowledges that it may be an issue for her boyfriend, and I agree, especially if he fouled up a stint at CC using federal aid Might not be eligible for anything until he pays for some courses on his own and brings his record up to snuff to get money. Also, he may not be PELL eligible. Both students are still dependents for fin aid purposes.</p>
<p>It is often approved for off campus housing even for freshman if a petition is so made, so that is an option for OP too, if the boyfriend is not accepted there, or doesn’t get the aid to make it possible. They can co-habit in student digs off campus which would be cheaper than two dorm/meal plan charges if they are careful and the market so allows it in that area, and the boyfriend can find a job and take courses singularly as a non matriculating student until he redeems himself to be eligible for fin aid if that is an option or to get into the school if he is not so accepted. Or he may not go to school at all, and work. My close friend married someone in the Oakland area of Pittsburgh while she was a college student there, and he was not in college, didn’t even finish high school. He was however a master carpenter who did wonderful wood work and renovations and that has been what they’ve done for years as a vocation and what they both simply enjoy doing. A better and happier life than a lot of others who married peers educationally.</p>
<p>focus on yourself, your education and your career. it impacts the rest of your life. the boyfriend probably does not.</p>
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<p>This is not necessarily true. Most colleges have specific credit requirement limits for how many classes you have to take before you are a transfer. At a very few schools even one class can make you a transfer, but at most schools it’s between 12 and 24 credits (1-2 semesters of college-level work). At Northern Kentucky, it is 24 credits - students with fewer than 24 credit hours are considered freshman applicants.</p>
<p>NKU does require freshman to live on campus but there are many exceptions, such as being from one of the surrounding counties in KY, OH, or IN; being 21 or older, being married, etc. I don’t know what UC is, but if it us the University of the Cumberlands, they require all students to live on campus unless they are married, disabled or living with a parent or guardian. So getting married could allow the OP to move off-campus into an apartment with her boyfriend (although I am NOT advocating that, and actually discourage it).</p>
<p>OP, I married my high school sweetheart two years ago. We are 28 and 29. We have been together for nearly 14 years (Christ!) - we started dating when I was 14 and he was 15, and so we faced some of the same issues you do. Over and over again, we’ve made the decision to do what was best for each of us more or less separately at the time, although we increasingly took each other into account the older we got. We conducted our college searches separately. (We ended up in colleges in the same consortium, both on full scholarships.) When I was headed to grad school and he the military, he encouraged me to choose my university without worrying about where he was going to be stationed and I encouraged him to choose his job not worrying about where I was going to grad school. (He got stationed just 80 miles from me, completely by accident - then he finished his service and joined me in school.) And when the perfect job popped up for me 250 miles away from where we were both doing degrees at the same school several years later, he was my biggest supporter in taking it. (We visit! We take the bus. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.)</p>
<p>Okay, now we’re <em>done</em> with the long-distance thing after this one, lol. BUT we can make that choice now because we made sacrifices earlier. We’ll both have Ivy League degrees, he has top secret clearance and years of military work experience, I’ll have these two years from my current job. We’re more competitive than if we had constrained each other’s choices by trying to stay together all the time throughout our early years.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that you shouldn’t try to be together, or at least close. And I’m not going to say that you’ll probably break up because we don’t know that and you totally might not. My only advice is that you give each other a little compromise and make sure that when you make choices you are happy with them for your own professional and personal development, not just because it keeps you together. I think it’s a good decision to live apart in the residence halls for at least one year before thinking about moving off-campus together (I would advocate not living together at all during college. We tried that and it wasn’t really great for our social development. But to each their own).</p>
<p>OP, how do you know how much aid you’ll be getting if you haven’t applied yet?</p>
<p>If you are living independently now, I’m assuming you have some means of supporting yourself? Are you a full-time highschool student?</p>
<p>If your boyfriend owns a house right now, is he planning to rent it out while he’s gone at college, or sell it before matriculating?</p>
<p>I find some elements of this story a bit difficult to swallow. The boyfriend is a 19-year-old community college dropout who has his own house? I think most of the advice given above is pretty good, but I will add that it’s my best guess that you’d be better off if you ditch the boyfriend entirely.</p>
<p>If you want to go to college, go wholeheartedly to college. Live in a dorm, have a roommate, spend most of your weekends on campus with your peers. If you want to work on this relationship, do not go to college. Get married, get a job and focus on your marriage. Do not try to do both or you will wind up doing both badly.</p>
<p>@juillet - Just have to say I really liked your post. I have been somewhat reluctant to respond because these are such big decisions, but deciding to go to school together sometimes does work out. H and I have known each other since we were 13. We’ve been married now over 25 years. We were both top students and gave up opportunities to go elsewhere to attend the state flagship together on scholarship. We got married after our freshman year. I agree that this does limit social opportunities and I wouldn’t recommend it, although it worked out for us. H probably didn’t go as far academically as he would have otherwise, while I went farther, as he encouraged and supported my admission to med school at the same flagship. I do think that one thing that really helped us was waiting 9 years before having kids. Being a couple in college is one thing while being a family is something that is ideally done at another stage of life. I wish the OP best of luck. There is a lot of good advice here, but it always upset me when people assumed early on that we would not be able to make this work.</p>
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<p>My brother bought his house when he was 19 or 20, after dropping out of community college. After he dropped out he went to an on-the-job training program and entered a technical field in which new earners make around the same amount as the average new bachelor’s degree holders. In fact, his starting salary was more than my PhD stipend. I have a PhD now and I don’t actually make that much more money than him, especially since he now has 7 years of experience behind him.</p>
<p>In a low CoL living area the mortgage on a house may be less than it costs to rent a smaller apartment, and with assistance programs one can put down a smaller down payment and still own.</p>
<p>Thanks @jsrcmom!</p>
<p>Well we both got accepted to the college we both hoped we get to go to. We visited it during seperate visits and here recently we visited the campus together. We fell in love with NKU. I am very very happy and I’m even more ecstatic because his mother has agreed to do everything she can to assure her son goes to this college, despite financial purposes. And HE DID NOT DROP OUT. He withdrew to focus on work, he couldn’t do both, but now he has enough saved up to live off of while living in a dorm. And his house is owned by his friends dad, who also agrees, that he should take a few years off of work and definitely get the college experience we both have always wanted. We are very happy to begin our lives together. We both have agreed to focus on our majors and to live off of campus together once we have experienced that true college dorm life. I am so happy and very thankful that my boyfriend and I get to go to the college we both have wanted to attend for several months now. </p>
<p>Is this Super Early Decision? How do you both have acceptances already? Is it for next fall or in the spring?</p>
<p>Trsherella: this is Rolling Admissions, which many directionals (such as NKU) practice - apply in August, get your answer about 6weeks later.</p>
<p>Samia: Very glad things worked out. 
When do you hear about scholarships? December?</p>
<p>@Trsherella, Check out the Parents 2015 threads (regular and 3.0-3.3). Both threads have kids who have been admitted to colleges. I believe some kids have already committed to attend - they are done with college applications. Rolling admissions is a very good thing. </p>
<p>Congratulations @samiam6969!</p>
<p>Great @samiam6969 it sounds like you have a good path going forward…if things work out with BF and if they do not. We all wish you the best of luck! Please let us know how you are doing from time to tiem.</p>
<p>NKU? Northern Kentucky?</p>