I have a big dilemma. I submitted the FAFSA using my parents tax returns and it turns out that I do NOT qualify for any financial aid, not that that surprises me though. Unfortunately, my parents have made it very very clear that they are not going to help me pay for college. The housing deposit is $400 (I’m on my own for all of this), and luckily I have enough saved up for that, but what about the next four years? Am I just going to have to take out a ton of loans? I don’t know what to do.
well … where are you planning to going to school, what’s the cost of attendance, what’s your GPA and SAT/ACT score, what state are you from, what do you want to study?
Your loans are limited to $5500 for freshman year. Any additional loans will either need to be taken out by your parents or cosigned by them…for all four years of college. Will they do this?
How much do your colleges cost? How much do you need from your parents?
Have you discussed what you will do if you don’t go to college with your parents?
Also, when you say you "don’t qualify for aid…is it because your FAFSA EFC is more,than the coat to attend your colleges?
DO NOT PAY THAT HOUSING DEPOSIT!!!
You will not be able to afford this school, so if you deposit, and it’s not refundable, you’ll be throwing away that money.
You have no means to pay for college. YOU can ONLY borrow $5,500 for freshman year which is NOT enough to pay for college.
I would take @mom2collegekids’ advice and not pay the housing deposit. You can only borrow $5500 a year, and frankly, it would not be advisable to borrow more than that even if you could. Unless your school is planning to give you a HUGE merit scholarship or you have a rich relative who wants to pay for your college even though your parents won’t, I don’t see how you’ll be able to afford a “sleep away” school for one year, let alone 4.
What exactly do your parents want you to do if they’re not going to pay for college? Will they let you live with them and commute to a local community college or state school? Are they not willing to pay for any college, or are they just not willing to pay for the school you want to attend?
You can meet with a FAFSA counselor explaining your situation. My roommate had rich parents that refused to help her because she was gay and she had a meeting with the FA counselor and got it appealed.
If you are on your own financially, you need to be smart about this. Massive amounts of debt are going to hurt you in the long run. For starters:
- Consider going to community college for your first two years. It's about $50 a unit give or take which is WAY more affordable than a university rate.
- Get your general ed out of the way at community college and get good grades. If you graduate or transfer with honors you are more likely to get a good chunk of merit based aid.
- By spending your last teo years at university instead of all four you are cutting out more than half of the money you would originally need. Avoid getting yourself into more than 30K in debt.
Just think about all of the costs you are going to encounter after graduation. A loan payment (that lasts 10-20 years and you pay almost double that amount in interest over the years), rent, utilities, cellphone, car insurance, car loan, everyday essentials, health insurance, ect. I don’t know your whole story or what your living situation will be like afyer graduation but I can speak from experience that loan payments suck and once you start missing payments, your credit score is going to be screwed and will affect all sorts of things if that happens.
Thank you for all your helpful replies!! My parents don’t believe that parents are supposed to pay for college, and they don’t want me to live with them and go to college. They said that I should just take out loans, but I was reading about it, and like all of you said, a loan of 5000 is just not enough especially if I have to live in a dorm.
I got into St John’s University in NYC and they offered me a $29,000/year merit scholarship, but the cost of attendance is much, much higher than that. I live in Louisiana and I know LSU tuition isn’t too expensive, but I don’t know if $5000 in loans would still even be able to cover it with the little scholarship they gave me.
I have a 30 ACT, 3.8 GPA. It’s pretty average and while I did get merit scholarships, they’re simply just not enough. 
Times have changed in the years since your parents went to colllege, putting yourself through college when your parents have ample income but just won’t help, isn’t doable anymore. Cost of attendance far exceeds the capped loan amounts available to students. Did you parents say they wouldn’t help before now? They gave you all of their tax information for FAFSA? You need to sit down and have a candid talk about this, what they are expecting just isn’t possible. You could do what I had to do in the 90’s and go to junior college while holding down a nearly full time job, then transfer to the least expensive instate option. Your loan amount is slightly more for junior and senior year, and if you are smart about it you should be able to save up some money from loans and work while you’re at community college. Looks like LSU tuition is $10,700 a year for 2016-2017: https://sites01.lsu.edu/wp/financialaid/undergraduate-cost-of-attendance/
@oconnorer --wait, ACT 30 and GPA 3.8. I just pulled up the LSU scholarship calculator and you qualify for about $9,900 in merit based scholarships per year. LSU tuition for one year is $10,758. So you pretty much have a full-tuition scholarship at LSU. You and your parents will need to pay room and board only.
What scholarship did LSU give you? Did you not get the $9,900??
Did you get a merit award from LSU?
If you live in Louisians you should also qualify for TOPS with those stats. That may be included i. The calculator @carachel2 ran.
Did you apply to any other Louisiana schools? Some of them wound probably give you even more than LSU.
<<<I have a 30 ACT, 3.8 GPA. It’s pretty average and while I did get merit scholarships, they’re simply just not enough.
My parents don’t believe that parents are supposed to pay for college, and they don’t want me to live with them and go to college. They said that I should just take out loans,
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Ok…it’s education time for your PARENTS. They may not know that you can only borrrow $5500. Ask them how you’re supposed to pay for “going away” to college if you can only borrow $5500??
Did you qualify for TOPS?
Did you apply to the Univ near your home?
Will your parents let you live at home if that’s all you can afford or do you have to leave after you graduate in May?
^^^ @austinmshauri Sounds like the parents are naive and think he can borrow his way to a sleepaway college.
Once they learn that THEY would have to cosign such loans, they may change their minds and let him commute from home.
do not go to community college. you will lose the big freshman scholarships that you can get for your stats, and will wind up paying more over 4 years.
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I have a 30 ACT, 3.8 GPA. It's pretty average and while I did get merit scholarships, they're simply just not enough. <<
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a 30 ACT is 95th percentile. you have nothing to be ashamed of.
your parents, on the other hand, have a lot to be ashamed of with how they are approaching this.
your stats can get you a 4-year full-tuition scholarship at Alabama-Huntsville
http://www.uah.edu/admissions/undergraduate/financial-aid/scholarships
if you take your $5500 loan and work summers and school year, you might be able to cover room, board, books, etc.
what about Louisiana-Monroe? their big auto-scholarship looks like it might cover almost everything:
http://www.ulm.edu/scholarships/freshmen.html
have a look at these scholarships too:
http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/
30 ACT is much higher than average.
^the national ACT average is a 21 so a 30 is COMPLETELY fine
I applied to other schools (before I knew I wouldn’t be able to qualify for any financial aid) including Fordham, NYU, Baylor and Tulane. My dream was always to go to college in NYC, which is why I was so excited when I got the 29,000k scholarship from St John’s. Unfortunately, because of the high costs it looks like NYC is out of the picture. Now I just have to see if I can even go to college at all this year! Haha. Filling out the FAFSA was quite a rude awakening for me.
Other schools have offered me scholarships as well. University of Hartford in a Connecticut offered me 24k, University of Bridgeport 22k, and St John’s 29k (I was so excited to hear about St. John’s until I realized the cost of attendance is much higher than 29k )
LSU offered me 3,550. The TOPS honors scholarship for living in Louisiana will cover 3,844. That still lives a lot left over for me to pay with no money to pay it with…
My mother is Filipino, and I’m not saying all Asian families are like this (and they probably aren’t, but I think some are to a degree) but my parents definitely think it is the child’s responsibility to pay for college. The expected family contribution is $19,653 a year according to the FAFSA.
Thank you for suggesting those universities. I will definitely look into them and apply. I just want to be able to go to college. For the longest time I thought I was going to go to NYU and live in a dorm in the city and intern in the city and it’s insane how wrong I was. Reality came crashing down on me very hard!!!
*** I know that joining the military is an option that helps with paying for college, but last year I was in a car accident and had to get brain surgery (I have a TBI now) so I don’t think I even qualify for the military anymore. Otherwise that would seem like a good option to me