If there are automatic full ride schools that are suitable (see link in #14), then those may be worth a look as safeties, since funding will not depend on any of your family finances and how each college evaluates whether you are dependent / independent.
However, you still need to figure out if your aunt’s and uncle’s objections are really cost-based, or if they are due to some other reason they are not saying (e.g. they want you to stay at home).
Why not just apply and then if you get into a school and they 100% match need, go there. If they don’t, go the route that your aunt and uncle are recommending.
Once you figure out the legalities, talk to your Aunt/Uncle and tell them you understand that finances are an issue, and that if you can find a college that will net cost you as much as CC + SUNY, would that be okay?
If you can get some fee waivers, apply to a few, say three, top choices and see what kind of money you will get. But you need them to cooperate in order to fill out FAFSA and CSS forms. So I like @bopper 's idea. Or, consider the SUNY route to Cornell, if you are determined to aim high. I don’t know exaclty how it works, but I know Cornell will give some students conditional offers and then allow them to transfer in as sophomores. Maybe your parents would be okay with that. I also think Cornell has a SUNY college within the university, not sure how that works.
Or, go to CC, be a rock star, and apply to Harvard, et al, as a sophomore. By then you can choose to borrow more money if needed. But of course you still need to get enough FA to make it affordable.
It’s harder to get into most top schools, including Harvard, as a transfer student than as a freshman. Colleges that give merit aid usually give more to first year students than transfers.
It may be a good idea to check the local CC articulation agreements with Cornell. They only apply to the land grant portions of Cornell and thus only to specific majors. Here’s a link to BMCC’s http://www.bmcc.cuny.edu/advisement/page.jsp?pid=1180&n=Cornell%20University
Oh, I just want to add to my post above that, unlike some other articulation agreements, Cornell doesn’t guarantee acceptance unlike, e.g., CUNY.
Has the OP been back??
OP has not been back since yesterday morning. OP has not given a single stat like test score or GPA. I think there is a lot of jumping the gun in saying apply to Harvard.
It’s entirely possible that he’s working/ sick/ at Six Flags or something else in the hours since he last posted.
Everyone is right to say that NYU does not guarantee to meet full need, and in fact has a reputation for giving poor financial aid. However, in the case of one friend of my children, a talented student who spent the decade before college in the foster care system, NYU was the college that gave him the best financial aid package of all the colleges that accepted him. That included Columbia, Penn, and Cornell. He was almost literally penniless. Everyone offered more or less full financing of his college, but only NYU made it completely debt-free and included a stipend for incidental expenses. (This was a decade ago, by the way.)
The point is that it may be worth applying to a place like NYU. The fact that it has a bad reputation for financial aid does not mean that it gives poor financial aid in every case.
Also – It’s quite likely that the OP’s guardian-parents are just plain wrong about the likely cost to the OP of attending an elite college. But the OP is just plain wrong about “the picture-perfect college experience.” There is no such thing. College is basically what the student makes of it, whether living at home or in a dorm, whether going to the local CC or to a great university thousands of miles from home. Each person’s college experience reflects that person as much as the institution. And no one’s life is “picture-perfect.”
Please don’t get hung up on that.
We need EFC, stats, and whether the OP is independent for tuition purpose.
If OP is an exceptional student, she should probably at least aim high for the most selective colleges, because they are typically the most generous in terms of financial aid. Middle-income households usually receive full, or nearly full, aid packages from Harvard.
That’s true - attending a top college typically costs less than attending a flagship. Even with the Excelsior, top colleges’ aid would be calculated with the cost of room and board, books, transportation, and even pocket money. Many also dont include loans. Financial aid is based on that total, which makes a big difference compared to instate aid (based on tuition only.) Considering that op is an orphan, s/he woukd be among those proved to benefit most from the alumni network and resources of a top, residential college.
However at this point we don’t know whether OP is considered an independent or if their family makes 75k or 125k or less or more, what sort of grades or scores s/he has…
If s/he has an 86 GPA, 1200 SAT, Harvard Middlebury Colby Colgate Vassar Yale et alii wouldn’t be in the discussion.
I also think applying to SUNY Bing and Geneseo can’t hurt OP. And if op qualifies for HEOP it opens a lot of possibilities at top NY colleges (Colgate, Williams, Skidmore, Columbia, even NYU).
Sorry, I know I’ve been gone, but I had to take care of a family matter. Thanks for all the advice and things to consider. I appreciate it a lot. I probably should have given my stats earlier, but here they are:
GPA: 96.83 (weighted); 96.41 (unweighted); SAT: 1450 I recently spoke with my guidance counselor at school and he said that because I am in a court-ordered legal guardianship, financial aid would be looked at in terms of MY income, not my guardians, even though they make a little over a 100K. I should also note that I am looking to apply to SUNY Bing, Geneseo, Stony Brook, and several other great public schools in NY.
This won’t be the case at all for the FAFSA if these are legal guardians. If this student is in legal guardianship…he will be independent for financial aid purposes…per FAFSA…and won’t need the guardian info.
For the Profile…this will vary by school. Some will want info…and some just won’t.
I would get official confirmation that the guardianship is court-ordered (ie., look at the papers with your aunt & uncle, check with a social worker who has your case). Do not go on what a HS counselor says about a legal matter. This is too important to get wrong.
No, no. I AM in a court order legal guardian ship. I know that for sure. For the first year or two when I was living with my uncle and aunt, they did only have custody, but now they are my legal guardians. I only asked my guidance counselor to find out how that would affect me applying for financial aid.
Here is a website that helps students find schools with generous financial aid. I’ve set it to New York. Use the buttons on the top to find different types of colleges and you can see which genrally have low prices and low debt at graduation for low income students.
Thanks so much @AroundHere!