<p>I have a friend who really, really, really wants to go to a certain private university. She's already been accepted and everything, which was a huge deal because of her not-so-high test scores.</p>
<p>Her parents are divorced and her mother remarried, and her stepdad is a lawyer. The stepdad won't help pay for college at all--that's a non-negotiable, as I understand it. But his income still influences their EFC... </p>
<p>Without the stepdad's information on the FAFSA, the EFC would be around $5000. But as things currently stand, they're looking at more like $27,000. The college costs around that each year, so they're eligible for hardly any federal or institutional aid. My friend is now looking at almost $30,000 each year in loans.</p>
<p>To make matters worse, she's a music major. Not only will it be hard for her to pay back the loans, but it's too late to audition for the music program at any other school.</p>
<p>Needless to say, she's going back and forth between hopeful, panicked, and depressed on a daily basis.</p>
<p>She needs to find a more affordable school if her stepfather won’t contribute. The most affordable route is for her to start in a CC and transfer once she’s done her two years there. She can work while she does that and, hopefully, have some money saved.</p>
<p>Presumably her lawyer stepdad is paying some of the family expenses for her mom. Maybe her mom can use the money that the stepdad is “saving her” in living expenses to pay the college bills.</p>
<p>It is long past May 1. How did your friend THINK these bills were going to be paid? If she sent in a deposit and agreed to attend the school, she needed to have a plan to pay the bill. I know that sounds rough.</p>
<p>She needs to talk to her mom about how these bills will be paid. If her dad is still alive, perhaps he might be interested in helping her with her college costs too.</p>
<p>It’s a sticky situation. Up until about a week ago, it looked like her mom and her stepdad would be getting a divorce… which, slightly twisted though it may seem, would have been very convenient for bringing down that EFC. He’s kind of a jerk anyway, but that’s neither here nor there…</p>
<p>She’s long known it would be hard, but she has kind of been grasping at straws and refusing to believe she could possibly go somewhere else. I’ve never seen someone so in love with a particular college. She’s already rejected the music scholarship to her only real fallback, a nearby state university. </p>
<p>Is there no way to legally leave the stepdad off of the FAFSA? Or somehow adjust things so that his high income won’t make the EFC so outrageous? Is there any loophole?</p>
<p>If not, is it more wise to stick it out at the private university for one year and see how things turn out? —or go to the public school for a year or two and then transfer? </p>
<p>My perception has always been that it’s harder, if not impossible, to win merit aid as a transfer student. Her only significant financial aid is likely to come from music scholarships. How would transferring work in this case?</p>
I think it will be better to start at the local U and then, if she really wants to, transfer later. If your friend were asked, I think she would rather say “I graduated from Private school X” than “I went to Private school X as a freshman”. At that point her stepdad might have had a change of heart in paying.
I think you are right. Most merit aid is targeted at incoming freshmen. For transferring music students, she would have to ask the private school about that.</p>
<p>There is no legal way to leave stepdad off the FAFSA unless they actually separate. Her mom should have worked out the financing details of her education long ago and it’s unfortunate she’s left her child hanging on this long. </p>
<p>Imo, it would be better for her to start at a public school and then transfer and graduate from her dream school, particularly if she can resurrect the music scholarship. Transfer students can sometimes garner department scholarships and some schools do offer merit aid for transfers…hard to say without knowing what school. But, if her stats now aren’t high enough to get any aid at her first choice, she really doesn’t have anything to lose there.</p>
<p>No student should even consider taking on loans for $30k per year. And, there’s no way a future grad as a music major will be able to afford to pay it back. </p>
<p>Besides, she can’t get such loans by herself; she’d need her mom to co-sign and it sounds like her mom’s income is too low to qualify anyway. </p>
<p>It’s unfortunate that she and her mom didn’t figure all this out long before this.</p>
<p>How much will her mom give her each year for her education?</p>
<p>I’m very sorry she passed on the in-state scholarship. Could she get it again if she waited and re-applied next year? Our kid’s music teacher lost a wonderful scholarship through too much partying, and she’s been very direct in telling kids that she was never able to get as much later on – that the biggest and best scholarships are reserved for freshmen.</p>