<p>As a non-traditional student, I am finding it extremely difficult to get help with financial aid, i.e. merit-based scholarships, awards, etc.</p>
<p>Here is my situation:</p>
<p>I recently got my A.A. from HCC in Tampa and am enrolled in classes at UCF for fall 2010. I plan to go to graduate school and pursue degrees in history so I can teach at the college level. I am 31 years old and married with no kids. I screwed around in community college when I was 18 and got F's. I returned in 2007 and replaced those F's with A's, and I received nearly all A's in my other courses throughout HCC. My GPA is currently 3.78.</p>
<p>My husband is an attorney and makes great money. However, he has an enormous amount of debt, mostly from his own student loans a few years back, and I have only been working part-time for little money because I attend school full-time. Basically, we live paycheck to paycheck.</p>
<p>Has anyone else had problems finding financial help, scholarships, etc? Can anyone recommend anything to me, like websites, books, etc?</p>
<p>I don't understand this! I feel that I have so much to contribute to any institution! My grades are proof that I am taking this seriously and that I am passionate and enthusiastic about my education. Why aren't there more opportunities for help for people like us? </p>
<p>Any help would be greatly appreciated. Even if you can't help, just say hello! It's sometimes comforting just knowing I am not going this alone!</p>
<p>You’re not going through this alone, if you look at the Transfer Students forum and on this forum, you will find several threads asking about FA and merit scholarships for transfers. For instance:</p>
<p>The unfortunate fact is that most merit scholarships go towards luring fr applicants to schools, and there are relatively few, and usually for less money, for transfers. If you are PTK, there are often merit scholarships for members. </p>
<p>As far as need based FA, some schools treat transfers the same as fr admits, while others offer less to transfers. You really have to go to the college websites to find out each school’s policies. As I’m sure you’ve realized, a high income and large loans are a bad combination for FA, as income is the biggest factor used in determining need and there is not leeway given for what you owe in loans.</p>
<p>I’m afraid that there is a paucity of books or webites for transfers, likely due to the lower numbers compared to fr admissions. IMO the most information you will find is on the Transfer Students forum of this site.</p>
<p>Here is one thread with a few schools with merit for transfers:</p>
<p>Agree with everything Entomom said and want to throw in that I would not borrow a lot of money given your goal. A very, very small percentage of people who want to teach one of the humanities at the college level will attain that goal unfortunately. There are just too many PhDs and too few jobs. </p>
<p>A state school you can commute to is probably going to be your best bet.</p>
<p>Unfortunately merit aid tends to be fairly limited for transfer students. Most large college scholarships are for freshmen starting school right out of high school. As an example my daughter’s college (a large State U) has numerous scholarships for freshmen starting school straight from high school. The largest is for national Merit Finalists and a full ride. The next one is ACT based and is a full tuition scholarships plus a cash scholarship of $5500 a year. The third is similar to the first but is a smaller cash amount. There are also numerous smaller partial tuition waivers. In contrast the largest merit scholarship for transfer students is a partial tuition waiver of $2500 - a lot less than the three large freshman scholarships.</p>
<p>You probably do not qualify for much, if any, need based aid. Debt is not taken into consideration by FAFSA.</p>
<p>Sadly, there are few scholarships for transfer students. And, since you’ve already selected a school, UCF, you’re really limited to what it would offer (which sounds like nothing).</p>
<p>You won’t qualify for any grants for financial aid because your H makes too much money. It doesn’t matter that much of his income is going towards his own student loans. (BTW…I hope some future law students read this thread; many think that they can take out big loans for law school because they will be making so much money that they can easily pay them back and still have a lot of money left over.</p>
<p>You may have to delay finishing your education for a year or so. You might spend the next year working full time and setting the money aside for your college costs.</p>
<p>You have a few advantages that you need to leverage. You have a very gainfully employed husband that is helping you through college and have no children to have to support at the same time. I don’t know what your lifestyle is, but I am curious if a drastic lifestyle change could yield a lot more in savings/cash for this particular dream. If needed, if you took a few years to work fulltime, save that money, as well as save money from the drastic lifestyle downsizing, it should be more than enough to get you through the rest of your undergrad. For grad school, federal loans are much larger and there are more grant/work options as well.</p>
<p>I also caution that you look into the likelihood of having fulltime or even parttime work in the future as a humanities graduate wanting to teach. Open up a community college handbook and count the number of full-time department professors. Probably only 2 for a large school, the rest all part-time And then find out the average age of the tenured history professors to see when realistically an opening might occur (and if the college is even going to bother hiring a full-time replacement). Then realize that the college will be FLOODED with applications for that single opening…</p>
<p>If you really want to teach at a college, first pick a major that requires a lot more bodies–while a history department can get away with 2 or 3 fulltime professors and maybe 3 more parttime, an English department may have 10 - 12 fulltime and another 15 - 20 parttime. Numbers game just works better. Maybe you love history. But there isn’t much of a market need for history teachers at the college level. </p>
<p>“I don’t understand this! I feel that I have so much to contribute to any institution! My grades are proof that I am taking this seriously and that I am passionate and enthusiastic about my education. Why aren’t there more opportunities for help for people like us?”</p>
<p>Nope. Sorry. The real world doesn’t work this way. You can play to the market (follow the money and funding) or you can follow your passion. Rarely do these align.</p>
<p>I don’t know if you would qualify for a Teach for American grant, but if you do and you accepted it, you would have to teach some kind of K-12 in a challenged area as a “pay back.”</p>