<p>You can’t declare financial independence (if you could, everyone would do that!) and ROTC does not mean that you can go anywhere you want. </p>
<p>There are some schools that will cover room and board with ROTC. UPortland is one. Springhill might be another.</p>
<p>UPortland - Army ROTC Scholarship Program
This program will cover tuition and fees, a textbook allowance, and a monthly stipend during the academic year. The Army ROTC Scholarship provides full tuition and fees. Army ROTC students scholarships **will also receive a room and board scholarship<a href=“capped%20at%20the%20double%20room%20rate”>/B</a> during all years the student is receiving the scholarship and is living on campus. Scholarships are available in all academic disciplines to qualified students based on ability, not need. Special scholarships are available to pre-nursing and nursing students.</p>
<p>Scholarship winners also receive** $900 annually for books, supplies, and equipment**, as well as** up to $5,000 in spending money (tax-free)**. Recipients receive free room and board for all four years of their scholarship. </p>
<p>You’re going to have to do one of the following…</p>
<p>1) Start at a CC and then transfer. Work to pay for the CC and save for the last 2 years of college.</p>
<p>2) Get a big scholarship for a 4 year college, take a student loans, and work summers and during the school year to pay for the rest.</p>
<p>3) Go to your local 4 year and commute. Pay for tuition and books with a jobs and student loans.</p>
<p>4) Find and get accepted to a ROTC program that covers all expenses.</p>
<p>*If a merit scholarship is available at a school that is “far away” where will travel money be coming from? *</p>
<p>Are the OPs parents refusing to pay “one red cent” towards anything to do with college? Does that mean if the student goes away to school, they won’t cough up some bucks to bring the child home for Christmas? If so, then the child won’t be going home…may go to a local friend’s home for the holidays and may stay locally over the summer with a friend… </p>
<p>Parents who won’t help pay can’t expect the student to be flying back and forth for holidays. It doesn’t sound like these are parents who are low-income. It sounds like these are parents who have had their own priorities - which don’t include their child’s education. If that’s the case, then they have to accept that the student’s priority may not include traveling back and forth to the original home state. Such parents can’t have it both ways.</p>
<p>What exactly DO the parents expect will happen after high school graduation? Please do share your dreams with them. Make sure that they know that colleges put ALL families over the barrel. You are supposed to be an adult at 18 but college billing offices won’t let that happen. Make it clear that these are your choices:</p>
<p>1) Work a menial job (Pizza hut, etc)
2) Wait until age 24 to apply to college
3) Join the military
4) Document abandonment or abuse so that you can be declared independent.</p>
<p>But “borrowing tons of money” is NOT an option for you. If they won’t contribute money or fill out the Fafsa or co-sign a loan, you are not going to college. Banks won’t lend directly to you. Pell Grants may help (depending on family income) but you’ll need their help to get the forms filled out. </p>
<p>Many parents remember the day when hard working kids worked their way through college. But college costs have skyrocketed. It is not possible to get through college by working part time. </p>
<p>Please realize that your parents may be feeling overwhelmed and afraid. They may be looking at bills and future retirement and be terrified already – so the idea of college expenses seems impossible. Help them see that a united team has the best shot at scholarships and reasonable loans. Good luck!</p>
<p>It is also possible that the parents have said they will pay for an in-state public university, but will not pay anything if the student insists upon going out of state.</p>
<p>Since the OP lives in Bloomington, Indiana, I am guessing that the friend’s parent teaches or works at IU and has been expecting their kid to go to IU because it is a good school that offers significant merit money for in-states, to the point where IU costs practically nothing for them to attend. Conversely, the kid wants to get away from Bloomington and go away to college, but does not have the money to finance an OOS school, public or otherwise. Bloomington has two excellent high schools academically, and obviously many, many well-educated parents with ties to the university and high achieving kids. The parents are not poor by any stretch, they just don’t see why they should be spending money on private OOS colleges given their in-state option, especially in this economy. It is a story that gets played out over and over and over. Sometimes a compromise is reached where the kid goes to IU Bloomington but lives in the dorm instead of commuting.</p>
<p>It is possible if the student lives in Bloomington, then the parents expect the student to live at home and use a student loan/scholarship money to pay for school - hence not needing to pay anything themselves.</p>
<p>If that’s the case, then the student needs to - at a minimum - apply to IU as a safety school.</p>
<p>A commuter can have more of a “campus” experience at a residential college like IU if he/she goes to campus early in the day, then later studies in the library, student center, or with study groups, joins clubs, perhaps works on campus, and only goes home to sleep (essentially using the home as a hotel).</p>
<p>OP…what are your friend’s stats? And do her parents expect her to commute to IU or what?</p>
<p>First off, there are legal and potential tax issues in the withdrawal and/or transfer of funds held in custodial accounts for minors. This is not something to be done on a whim and is not recommended.</p>
<p>Secondly, the 35% number you quote is out of date. FAFSA assesses 20% of students’ assets vs 5.6% of parents’.</p>