I’m on SSI, I don’t have money (very little) to put toward college. I’d like to find a school I can do online that I can pay for with FAFSA…
Note: I will not do loans. Given my disabilities, it’s possible I wouldn’t be able to pay them back (not my goal, but the future isn’t sufficiently certain.)
Suggestions?
FAFSA is an app for fed aid. The most you’d get in “free money” is a Pell Grant which is about $5700 a year. …which is about $2800 per semester.
How much does the school with the online program cost?
You’ve been asking about online schools and FAFSA for a variety of majors since 2011. Do you have any college credits yet? If do, have you used any semesters of Pell aid (that’s the grant you’re applying for when you fill out the FAFSA)? I think you only get 12 semesters of it, so you have to use it wisely.
If there’s a community college you can commute to those are usually the most cost effective option. Have you checked your state college website to see what they offer? I don’t know if SD state colleges offer online degrees. Our state does, so it may be worthwhile checking to see if your state does too.
Yeah, unfortunately I wasn’t able to pursue most of the other things I’ve considered due to disabilities.
I decided to focus on photography as a career, just looking for something as a supplement or backup plan. My choices are excruciatingly limited.
Studying on-campus is not an option in my case, at least not here; and I don’t see how I’d be able to move.
I think it’s possible to do classes online with something in my state, will have to check on psych.
I haven’t been able to find anything I could pay for with the pell grant, most cost about twice as much - even local schools…
any suggestions?
What is your home state?
South Dakota.
I looked at the top 6(?) so far, but I have found nothing in any state except community colleges and they have only offered associates. Every other college has been too high.
I looked at another 5-10 schools in SD, nothing with an online psych degree.
Fort Hays in Kansas seems(?) be to decent, and I could afford it with pell grant… BUT, it costs almost 3x as much for non-res :o
What I did, in your position, was take classes at a community college as I could afford them. Once I got my degree, I got a better paying job in a college town on the other side of our state and worked my way through college there.
@icor1031 Fort Hays charges the same tuition and fees for instate and out of state students taking only online courses. Total costs for 30 credits (average yearly course load) would be about $6217 for 2016-17.
The other thing to consider is if employers think that this degree is worthwhile…do they hire people with degrees from that college? Make sure the school is accredited.
Also have you worked with the South Dakota Advocacy Services for people with disabilities?
https://www.disability.gov/resource/south-dakota-advocacy-services/
http://www.washington.edu/doit/college-funding-students-disabilities
http://www.sdparent.org/web/index.php?siteid=2825&pageid=22690
http://dhs.sd.gov/drs/services.aspx
Do you have a social worker? Can you talk to them about options?
Are you sure on campus is impossible (it might be) or are there accommodations that could be made?
You want to make sure you are not limiting yourself to online options that might not be valuable when there may be many other options you have not thought of.
Have you contacted your state flagship or CC and talked to someone to see what is possible?
What is your goal with this degree? Particular job/vocation? Personal enrichment? Graduate school? You have to consider that question to know whether an online program is worth it even if you find one that meets your financial parameters.
@Sportsman88 I’d like to go into psychotherapy. I’m not sure being online or in person makes much difference for this?
@kidzncatz Huh… That’s weird, the person I spoke to at their college didn’t correct me when I said it costs more being a non-res, and I want an online degree. Now I have to look again, that could be good. 
@austinmshauri I don’t see how what I would do that in my situation / with the major I want, but I’m hoping I can make $ with photography to help pay… I’m trying to plan for the worst, though.
I can’t speak to psychotherapy specifically, but most counseling programs have residency requirements that online programs can’t provide. Licensed Clinical Psychology is a doctoral program that requires research as an undergrad. Licensed Clinical Counselor and similar are graduate programs that require substantial supervised counseling experience. The latter doesn’t pay well given the education requirements.
Please do your research before investing you time and money for four years in an online program that might not allow you to meet your career goals.
@Sportsman88 The 4-year program wouldn’t get me a licensed position, I already know that. I need a masters degree, minimum.
I can get into counseling as clergy without any formal education, but I’d like to move toward the option of going higher / accepting insurance.
A bachelors is useful whether I go beyond christian counselor or not.
A masters (not sure if major can be psych or has to be social work) and 1800hr of supervised work (within 2 years) would earn me the right to do private practice as a social worker, outside of being clergy.
A doctorate degree (plus whatever other requirements) in psych would allow me to function as a psychologist.
It makes a huge difference. Graduate programs in counseling require supervised clinical hours, and it would be difficult to complete those at a distance.
You don’t need to major in social work to do an MSW, but if you do get a BSW you can usually get your MSW faster through an accelerated program.
Do you really, really want to be a counselor or are you just looking for a nice lucrative fallback for your photography career? I wouldn’t discourage anyone from becoming a counselor or social worker, because we need those and they’re good professions. That said, they’re not necessarily good “fallback” careers for someone who is starting from scratch, can’t afford a lot and is really pursuing another career as a primary one. Even if you plowed through full-time it’ll be 6 years between now and when you can be a licensed counselor, and if (more realistically) you attend part-time while getting your photography business off the ground, it’ll be close to 12 years or more.
Besides, it’ll be difficult to find any online program that you can cover with just the money from Pell plus state grants, if you are eligible for any. And an online program will make it difficult to get into a PhD program in clinical psychology down the line, because there are certain things you need (like research and clinical volunteering experience) that are difficult to do at a distance from a university.
Either way, if I were you I would stick to brick-and-mortar, non-profit, accredited universities that have an online component to them. In other words, no Capella, Walden, or University of Phoenix. They’re going to be more cost-effective anyway, but they will also look better on your resume and your application to graduate school.
With that said - Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) is also pretty inexpensive; they cost $320 a credit hour or $3,840 per semester if you take 12 hours. That’s still more than Pell will cover, but not a whole lot more - you might be able to cover the shortfall with state grants or money out of pocket. If you attend half-time at 6 hours, that’s only $1,920 per semester, which you can more than cover with Pell - but it’ll take you longer than 12 semesters to finish.
Oregon State online is also very inexpensive - they cost $280/credit, so $3,360 per semester if you take 12 credits.
Liberty University online costs $375/credit, and they have a specialization in Christian counseling too.
Penn State has an online BA in psychology, but it costs $6,506 per semester if you take 12 credits a semester (and $535 per credit if you take below that; that’s about $3,210 if you are taking 6 credits in a semester). That’s honestly pretty cheap for an OOS public university, but still more than Pell will cover if you refuse to borrow any money - although if you borrowed a small Direct loan you could probably cover it. http://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/degrees-and-certificates/psychology-bachelors/costs
Arizona State online is $500/credit, so $3,000 for half-time and $6,000 for full time.
Drexel online has a special for 2016-2017 where they’ve reduced tuition to $479/credit, but I don’t know if that means your tuition will go up in 2017-2018 and beyond.
I would really recommend talking to your state’s disability services…sounds like you can get college funding and support through them.
@bopper I already checked with them.
@juillet The more I think about it and look into it, the more I like the idea of being a counselor.
Anyway, my understanding: I can get MSW (or as I now prefer, MsC) online, without clinical work. Then, I do 1800 hours of supervised work in my state, to be completed within 2 years, and I can get LPC (or LSW, in the case of MSW).
I want to do CLEP or community college for as much as possible (only 30(?) with fort hays, perhaps I can find somewhere to transfer more that isn’t thought of as a joke, as excelsior seems to be.) … I can graduate sooner this way, too.
Again, brick-mortar isn’t a good option for me… Right now I don’t have a place of my own to live, because social security doesn’t give me enough $ for rent + food + gas…
I live with my sister until I’m approved for housing assistance; if I move, I lose this assistance. So, moving isn’t an option, as the first problem.
I need to build a network to earn money doing photography, to pay for my masters. If I moved, I’d kill this network.
I also have great disrespect for the schools local to me, and I’m not sure any of them offer Bs/Ba in Psych, MsC or even MSW.
In theory, yes. In practice, I do think MSW students (or at least MSW students who want to be qualified to do clinical practice) are required to do fieldwork/practica, and so you may have to find a local fieldwork placement in order to complete all of the course requirements to get an LCSW. For example, in SD (where I live), in order to get an CSW-PIP to practice independently, you have to complete a Council for Social Work Education-accredited program. But one of the requirements to be CSWE-accredited is that an MSW program must have a field education program.
Most colleges have a limit on how many credits you can transfer in via testing with CLEP. 30 seems about the limit for most places. There are many colleges that will allow you to transfer in 60 credits of transfer credit taken in actual classes, though, at either a community college or another four-year.
No, what I meant was a B&M/physical university that has an online component. So no Walden (not a B&M school; and for-profit) but Arizona State is fine (is a physical university with a good reputation and is non-profit).
I don’t know which ones are local to you, but I’m sure a lot of your local public universities are no worse than some of the smaller regional schools that offer online education, like SNHU. They may not be as good as Arizona State or Penn State, but they are almost certainly less expensive and will be adequate for your needs. Besides, if you know you need a master’s, your undergrad won’t really matter so much.
You can easily check whether your local schools have a BA in psychology or an MSW by visiting their websites. The vast majority of four-year public universities offer a psychology major. The ones that don’t are usually special-focus institutions, like the tech-focused Dakota State University.