<p>
However,
We may see more of these:
<p>I thought that NJ case was thrown out. It was beyond ridiculous.</p>
<p>I hope no one is suggestion the OP sue his/her parents… I think everyone out here knows the schools expect parents to pony up. That does not mean parents are obligated to do so, however. We see students get into colleges all the time that they can’t afford for various reasons. Things the OP can consider:
- Finishing any credits they can in CC before transferring to try to limit the 4 year school expense to 4 (or 5) semesters vs. 6.
- Live at home and commute someplace if there is an ABET accredited school within commuting distance.
- Go for his/her first year (preferably to the cheapest option on the table), then take a gap year or semester to earn money before going back.
- Take a gap year now to earn money and apply again to any less expensive schools that might be options.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>right…but if TTU is a few thousand per year cheaper, then that can really make the difference to a student who doesnt have a safety net of parents who will step up. We dont want the student ending up at UT and have an unpaid balance and then cant register/finish degree.</p>
<p>I think the projections that recruiting will be an issue at TTU is crazy. Employers go where the kids are and TTU is a techie school. It isnt some obscure directional school that happens to have engg.</p>
<p>OP…can you tell us the engg discipline and why it will take 3 years???..and would it also take 3 years at TTU. If not, then it is a no-brainer.</p>
<p>Should OP apply to be independent of parents? They have basically put him in the position where he is, but it is not legally recognized as such. Not sure of the process, but while in college he would essentially be independent of them financially. It seems likely that FA would be better in this case. Probably too late for this year, but it sounds as though there is $ to pay for this year. </p>
<p>
See <a href=“https://studentaid.ed.gov/es/sites/default/files/fafsa-dependency.pdf”>https://studentaid.ed.gov/es/sites/default/files/fafsa-dependency.pdf</a> How FAFSA determines if the student is dependent or independent</p>
<p>If it were as easy as the parents saying they won’t pay to get an independence ruling then All parents would do it.</p>
<p>Hey there, guys. Thanks for all the support. I didn’t mean to neglect this </p>
<p>thread for this long, I just got caught up in a little bit of life this past </p>
<p>week. I’m just going to reply to people in the order that they appear in the </p>
<p>thread past my last reply…</p>
<p>@PurpleTitan, yes graduating without loans would be fantastic. I have considered </p>
<p>working on campus–as a matter of fact, I actually work on-campus at my current </p>
<p>school. But I’m a little worried about the benefits. Here at my current school, </p>
<p>part-time employees enjoy very few benefits, almost none at all. I have the </p>
<p>highest-paid part-time position available on my campus, but I’m pretty sure that </p>
<p>somewhere like a university will pay close to half of what I make now. And my </p>
<p>current job barely pays enough monthly. </p>
<p>@intparent, it just seems like sooo much money to repay. Compared with how much </p>
<p>I earned last year in total, I just can’t believe how much in loans I’ll have </p>
<p>once I leave college. I understand that engineers make a lot of money to begin </p>
<p>with, so repaying won’t be so hard. It’s just I’m terrible with finding jobs–</p>
<p>I’m too gullible and I might take the first job I find. Or I might pass over the </p>
<p>best job offer and be stuck with not so great choices. That said, Texas Tech is </p>
<p>a good school with a good offer, but I just don’t make good hasty decisions. At </p>
<p>this point, it looks like I’m going to be gridlocked to the point where a </p>
<p>decision is never made.</p>
<p>@PurpleTitan I really have no preference for UT Austin to Texas Tech. I might </p>
<p>sound like a total liar when I say this, but I actually only want to go to </p>
<p>college to learn and do something great. I feel like I’ll have the rest of my </p>
<p>life to party and get totally trashed like your typical college-freshman </p>
<p>dropout. Haha.</p>
<p>@Madison85 My parents have told me that the Parent PLUS Loans are a no-go. Thus </p>
<p>I should correct myself from earlier: UT Austin gave me $27,000 in loans, but </p>
<p>$15,000 of that will be loans I can’t access.</p>
<p>@oldfort I suppose I should get more confidence in myself that I will be able to </p>
<p>get a job after graduation then. I just see so many reports on CNN and whatnot </p>
<p>about how people of the millennial generation are struggling to find jobs in </p>
<p>their major, and even jobs to help pay off the average $29,000 of student loan </p>
<p>debt they each have. </p>
<p>@TuckerTroy I considered just the SMART scholarship program. I didn’t manage to </p>
<p>apply for it last year like I’d hoped because I had difficulty finding adequate </p>
<p>time to work on the application because I had the work schedule from h-e-</p>
<p>double-hockey-sticks last fall: <a href=“Overwhelming life I suppose? - College Life - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/1567979-overwhelming-life-i-suppose.html</a></p>
<p>I even thought about becoming an RA: That would make my decision SO easy if I </p>
<p>could become an RA. I wouldn’t mind the exhausting work of managing a dorm! The </p>
<p>problem is that, in order to be an RA, you had to have lived in a dorm </p>
<p>for the last two semesters (at least for Texas Tech). I’ve lived from home while </p>
<p>attending community college and never lived in a dorm, so I fail that </p>
<p>requirement. I also thought about serving in the military, but that was back in </p>
<p>high school for a totally different major. </p>
<p>@Madison85 I didn’t even know such a thing existed. They’ve never told me about </p>
<p>it.</p>
<p>@PurpleTitan You can buy a lot of stuff with $7,000, especially with the (most-</p>
<p>likely) $21,000 in loans it would make.</p>
<p>@PurpleTitan They have gone to community college but they never graduated with a </p>
<p>degree. And they want to avoid loans like the plague because they’ve already got </p>
<p>a lot of financial commitments, each of which have been detailed earlier in the </p>
<p>thread. As for housing/food arrangements, I immediately stopped looking after I </p>
<p>got UT Austin’s financial aid package. I was looking into the dorm option, </p>
<p>taking the cheapest option possible. But I lost the numerics on that.</p>
<p>@mom2collegekids lol, my transfer advisor here at my college told me that. I </p>
<p>will most definitely need three years at TTU. Chemical Engineering is what I was </p>
<p>investigating. And I unfortunately got bottlenecked this summer where I might </p>
<p>actually need four years at this point. There’s one major core class that I </p>
<p>wanted to take this summer, but I decided to work for extra instead and try studying for </p>
<p>the CLEP exam to get that one core class out of the way. I’m sure TTU will </p>
<p>accept the credit. I just need to find time to study.</p>
<p>@intparent I suppose I have saved a couple of thousand dollars. Frankly </p>
<p>speaking, I think my total cost of attending community college these last two </p>
<p>years totaled well under $4,000. I’m not interested in attending community </p>
<p>college anymore because for TTU I’m actually over the 66 transfer credit limit. </p>
<p>I’ve actually been on their advising website and they actually threw out my 1st </p>
<p>semester physics credit but kept the 2nd semester physics credit (which makes no </p>
<p>sense).</p>
<p>==================</p>
<p>I am having a little bit of a dilemma with UT Austin right now too. I have no </p>
<p>way of getting down to transfer orientation except by driving myself down there. </p>
<p>My parents don’t want to/can’t come with me. I’ve never driven such a far </p>
<p>distance before. Texas Tech, on the other hand, is a little closer to me, and my </p>
<p>parents wouldn’t mind driving me down there for orientation. But I have to just </p>
<p>decide where I will be going (and registering for transfer orientation at Texas </p>
<p>Tech probably wouldn’t hurt either! lol).</p>
<p>I wish I had at least a semester to clean this mess up. But I don’t–if I want to matriculate in the fall.</p>
<p>(Sorry for the double-spacing. My computer seems to think I want it no matter how many times I go back and erase</p>
<p>it all. )</p>
<p>Re the 66 credit limit:</p>
<p>If you can’t visit in person, get phone meetings with the Chem Eng department and with the Registrar’s Office at TTU. Ask both of them to go through your transcript with you course by course. You may find that you can pick and choose which courses transfer for credit, and which can be accepted to place you into a higher-level course even if you don’t get academic credit for them on your transcript. Ask about the Physics class. It could be that they consider your CCs Physics 1 to not be equivalent to theirs, but have used your Physics 2 for their Physics 1 credit.</p>
<p>@happymomof1 I’m pretty sure that the Physics 1 I took was directly equivalent to the Physics 1 they want: it even equates on tccns.org. My degree planner even says it fit the requirement for Physics 1 but since I was over the limit, it could not be transferred over and still apply to the degree plan. </p>
<p>It’s very strange for something like that to happen, and thus I will contact them soon and ask for them to throw something else out if possible.</p>
<p>@cameraphone:</p>
<p>So it’s up to you. Are the loans to you (not your parents) $12K or $7.5K? Because if it’s $7.5K, TTech is the only realistic option (have you talked to TTech yet? Offer still outstanding?) If it’s $12K, UT-Austin is an option with $8K in savings to spend per year (and I would take UT-Austin, but I’m not you). Also, what’s the breakdown in loans? How much of what type for each school? This matters because the different loans have different flexibility in repayment. There really is no reason to be scared of Staffords considering how flexible they are with repayment. Speaking of which, did you pay attention to what majors those folks who couldn’t find jobs in their major were in on CNN?</p>
<p>Also, I know $7K or whatever (and only for the first 2 years, so the third year is the same) seems like a lot now (it did to me too when I was a Pell grant recipient in college & had at most $20/week to spend), but in the grand scheme of things, it isn’t all that much.</p>
<p>Also, no employer for a professional job will force you to make an employment decision on the spot; you’d have plenty of time to ask people with more knowledge (like the folks on CC) about how good a job offer is, how good they are compared to others, etc.</p>
<p>Also, you’re an engineer, right? You should be detailed-oriented enough to work out what the exact costs of the cheapest options at UT-Austin and TTech are.</p>
<p>BTW, when it came to TTech vs. UT-Austin, I wasn’t referring to the party scene; I was referring to what group of people you’d rather spend time around (and thus network with).</p>
<p>Finally, more important than choice of school for your life is deciding on your choice of major. Look at that MIT OCW site I pointed you to and work through the problems to see whether you like chemical or mechanical engineering more. It also wouldn’t hurt to talk to some chemical and mechanical engineers who are actually working now to see if you’d like that type of work. Either ask your advisor if he/she knows any Mech or Chem engineers or try to contact the co-op offices at both UT-Austin and TTech, explain your situation as a potential transfer prospect, and ask them if they could set you up with people in MechE and ChemE (in co-op or whatever) for an informational interview. As an aside, aren’t MechE and ChemE quite different? I’m trying to wrap my head around being undecided between 2 disciplines like that.</p>
<p>@cameraphone:</p>
<p>And register for both orientations. You can always cancel. When are they?</p>