Okay, so I made a throwaway account for this because it goes into some personal details that I would prefer to not have on my main account. Anyways, financial problems in my family might literally prevent me from going to college.
First, some background. I’m a rising junior with very strong stats all around. The only weakness to my application will be my GPA, which will be around 3.4-3.5 unweighted, mostly due to me slacking freshman year and getting B’s that I shouldn’t have gotten. Anyways, aside from that, I have all the stats necessary to go to my dream school, Northwestern.
So my family has some pretty serious financial problems. The combined salary of my household is probably around 200k, but we really have no money. I went to private school for my first 2 years of high school, but I had to leave this year because of financial issues. When I was younger, we lived really well, but my parents didn’t take care of their finances and it led us to pretty overwhelming debt that really can’t get better. I mean, we literally can’t afford anything. It took almost a month after school started to get money to just buy school supplies for the year for my sister and I. It doesn’t help that my dad is an alcoholic, and money that could be used to help us get out of our hole is just constantly going to his addiction. I really don’t want to go into any more details.
So as far as I know, colleges give financial aid based off of salary. Since my household still has a relatively high salary, I am extremely concerned that I won’t be able to get any financial aid for college, and therefore won’t be able to attend.
I just really need help. Am I right, and what can I do to make sure that I can go to college?
Thanks everyone.