<p>As a general rule, most community colleges do not have living quarters. Many can give you referrals to some places that students use. Many have a housing department or bulletin board or group that can help you in finding places to live nearby. You need to read up on the college , starting with its web site and find out what is available.</p>
<p>Most community colleges do not have a whole lot of financial aid, nor do they give a lot in scholarships. You have to look at what this particular college does offer.</p>
<p>If you have never taken government aid for college, you may have some benefits that the federal government offers for college. About $5700 a year in PELL for full time, and up to $9500 in loans, some of them subsidized so you don’t have interest accrue while in school full time. Those are maximums. What you actually get will be determined by the cost of the school.</p>
<p>I’m going backwards in responding to your questions, starting with the details first. So the other thing you need to find out is what you need to do to get state and maybe county residency in order to get the lowest rates at this college. It can cost you double to be an OOSer. So you need to establish residency by the college’s rules before enrolling in school. That could cut your cost significantly </p>
<p>Yes, your roommate can be a non college student. The way it works is that a college sets a Cost of Attendance for a student, and that is the maximum you can get in finanical aid, pretty much. The school takes out the tuition, fees right up front and leaves you what’s left and you can spend that as you please. If you need more to live, too bad. IF you can do with less, good for you. What you actually pay and what your living arrangements are don’t generally go into it. That is set by the school in Cost of Attendance (COA)numbers that they have filed with the federal government .</p>
<p>As to whether or not you should even be going to college, whether college is going to help you find a job is a whole other matter. It would be foolish for you to just run through this money without having any idea what you are going to do in terms of getting an education, because there are lifetime limits involved and once it’s gone, that’s it. I know a number of folks who used up their financial aid aimlessly, carelessly, got nowhere with it, and when they finally got their heads on straight and knew the direction they wanted to go, the money was gone, and they owed for those loans they took out. That meant every course they took was on them, and most ended up painfully taking the courses, maybe one at a time as they worked a job to make ends meet so that it took much longer to get on the career path. Don’t make that mistake. </p>
<p>Going to school for a degree is something that requires commitment, and even on a full time basis, an AA degree is two years, and the Bachelors 4, and that’s only if you stay on course, get those requirement fulfilled, toe the line, do well and “get into it”. More students than not fail. So if you have some problems staying on task, you can pretty much count on bringing those problems with you and you are going to have to deal with them in order to succeed in this endeavor. This is not a free ticket, Misuse and you can end up in worse shape than you are now.</p>
<p>If you are thinking of moving in with your significant other, I suggest you work that out with him/her first, look for some work, find some free or low cost community courses and try to get a direction. If you are looking at going to college, look at some others closer to where you contact lives, because starting anew in an unfamiliar area is not easy. Community college serve the community for the most part, so their resources and facilities are not set up to deal with those coming from a far, and you would have to do this pretty much on your own. I do urge you to look into counseling resources that any colleges have that may be able to assist you with your social anxieties and other issues. You are really taking on a huge challenge going into a whole new environment when you have these issues and don’t want to talk to people, as that is something that is important in making such a transition.</p>
<p>With whom are you living now? With parents? What about starting some courses locally, and taking advantage of some the college resources of your local schools and getting a track record before going off and having to deal with multiple unknowns?</p>