You are correct in that she did not apply to the colleges where she would have had the best financial aid…she attended the local CC in the state we lived with the intent of going to a 4 year after that was finished. Hubby lost his job/got transferred to another state literally 4 weeks after she completed her first year at CC.
I am speaking of divorced parents in regards to my personal friends situations. My female friend is divorced. Her alcoholic ex husband is on unemployment. They have 3 kids together. She works for the post office and has for many years. All 3 kids put that they lived with the ex and got the full amount of grant money, so she told me “they really kind of went for free”. I don’t know if that’s legal, but that’s what they did.
^Sounds like the kids may have committed financial aid fraud.
That’s what I kind of thought. She literally paid not one dime, for any of the 3 of them to complete CC.
Why would you want to be friends with someone who committed financial aid fraud and stole your tax dollars?
Divorced parents aren’t necessarily in a better position than your family is for financial aid. Divorced families who commit fraud may be, but since you’re not interested in lying on your financial aid forms I wouldn’t use their packages as a benchmark for anything.
Even if single parents are scooping up buckets of scholarship dollars (I don’t think so, I’m single and think there is more of a singles penalty, especially on the tax side with the AOTC), you have to deal with your situation. You have a lot of special circumstances with your daughter having not graduated from high school in your current state (which of course applies to anyone who has moved into a state like Florida or Georgia that have scholarship programs for hs students like Bright futures or Hope) and she can’t work because of health problems. Most college students aren’t getting a lot of aid, they are working and taking out loans to pay for college. While prisoners do get education benefits(and room and board, and medical care), I don’t think you’d rather your daughter was in prison. Or poor. It may seem like every other group is getting a better deal, if you talk to athletes or minorities or first generation students, they arent getting big scholarships for those designations.
Some schools have department scholarships she might qualified for, but pay attention to the deadlines. Many schools have museums on campus and there are jobs at those museums. Have you contacted the 4 year school and asked about sources of scholarships? Have you contacted the community college? Looked for local scholarships?
I won’t be so quick to judge your friend as a financial aid fraud. She may have done some ‘FAFSA planning’ and had her children live with their father one day more than with her so they were entitled to use his info on the application. People do planning to maximize their tax benefits and financial aid benefits. They defer income, move or sell assets, use a 1040A rather than a 1040. You have the right to do planing too.
“Have you contacted the community college? Looked for local scholarships?” OF COURSE I have! She IS a first generation student and she is not looking for “big scholarships”…she can’t get ONE. She would be thrilled with a $500 one, at this point.
They tell kids, all through school, how much your grades matter, for scholarships, etc. She is finding this to be not true, not for her, and I don’t believe she is the only one.
There are transfer scholarships at the 4 year she will be attending, so we are hopeful for that.
As for my friend…no, those kids have lived with her since she left him. Federal postal employee for over 20 years and her kids got a free ride, to the CC here. That’s not “planning” in my book. It may qualify as scamming, though.
I found out about this fraud after being friends with her for about a year. Maybe I fun in “poorer circles”, but most of my divorced friends have kids who make out great on the financial aid end.
My family was low income after my dad became disabled when I was in grade school. I got full tuition grants so I was able to go to a community college full-time tuition free. Of course, I still had to work full-time flipping burgers to pay for transportation, insurance, food, gas, books, and personal expenses. And I never had time to go out with classmates or join clubs to network, and I couldn’t afford to take an unpaid internship. It was a challenge then, and this was back when kids could work their way through school.
If you think being poor is so great, quit your jobs and give away your assets. It’ll only net you about $5k/year in Pell grant money, though. Good luck paying for college with that.
I’m not trying to make you feel bad, but I think your opinion is being influenced by these outliers (brother in jail, stories you’ve heard of friends committing fraud) and you think everyone has lots of free financial aid because they are gay or tall or a minority or an athlete or even a perfect 4.0 gpa. That’s not how it is. There are thousands of top students every year who get no scholarships based on grades alone. Many have to make choices to get those scholarships that your daughter didn’t want to make (or couldn’t because of her health) - go to a school far away that may not have been a first choice, take out loans for the amounts not covered, work, not be home for holidays. There are very very few students who are going to school for free. Many middle class students have to take out some loans.
Your daughter may have been eligible for some merit money at schools based on her high school grades, but those scholarships usually don’t cover everything and you/she decided to go the community college-to-4 year route. In the end though, you may pay less for 4 years of college than you would have if she’d taken a scholarship at the more expensive 4 year college. For example, my daughter could have done the community college/state school combo for about $20k in total tuition. Instead,she gets $19k/yr in merit scholarship for a private school, but her tuition is double that, so will pay about $80k in tuition/4yrs, $60k more than the no scholarship schools. Free money doesn’t always make it cheaper.
You made good financial choices with the community college. You have a good option for her to complete her education at a local school, and that she couldn’t go far from home even if there were big scholarships offers of full tuition at another school. Deal with your situation, not with what others got (or told you they got - many brags of ‘a full ride’ are exaggerations).
Two echo Twoin’s fine post- there are all sorts of people doing all sorts of things which are illegal, unethical, unseemly, or otherwise questionable. You can decide to envy them their lack of a moral compass- or deal with the reality you have.
There was a kid I read about a few years ago who hit the financial aid lottery at several top schools. He was a Somalian refugee- came to the US alone, his entire family was murdered in front of him; he walked hundreds of miles at night evading capture until he got to a UN run refugee camp.
If you didn’t know his story, you’d see a tall Black kid who was good at sports who clearly got into the colleges he did with the packages they gave him due to affirmative action, or the unfairness of athletic scholarships, or some such blather. The fact that he achieved what he did academically and intellectually despite a horrifying and violent childhood, arriving in the US to go to a foster family speaking no English, “making do” with whatever resources this family was able to provide for him beyond food and shelter is so remarkable.
Your D is likewise remarkable. If you guys have figured out a way for her to get a college education while still providing the kind of support she needs for her medical issues- bravo to all of you. And she’s getting the top grades she’s getting because she’s a wonderful student and intellectually curious, not to gain points on a scoreboard somewhere. At the point at which she’s ready to pivot from volunteer work to paid work, your situation will ease. And down the road, when she’s a working professional, all of you will be proud that you figured out how to support her goals as a family-- which in her case, meant sacrificing the merit money she would have been able to get by going far away, in order to give her the structure she needed.
Nice success story- and you didn’t have to break the law to do it!!!
I’m sorry about your dad, I am. I was raised on welfare with divorced parents as well. Of course I don’t wish to be poor…that’s the way I grew up.
Great post, well said.(Blossom). It’s been nothing but a challenge with her medical issues, but as they say “everybody’s got something”. Her entire life has been a health challenge, but her love of learning makes that a bit more tolerable. It’s been a challenge $ wise as well, with her health challenges, but that’s parenthood. We are blessed to even have insurance (some don’t) and count our blessings every single day. I fear I’ve come across as a snobby bitch…I’m not, I assure you. I really do appreciate the advice you have all so freely given.
@speculator, I understand where you’re coming from. If you surround yourself with schemers and negative people you will likely be less satisfied with your options. I think @MaineLonghorn is the one who said to ask yourself, “what’s next?” That’s a great frame of mind.
I have a college degree. I had a well paying job at CBS and if I stayed there I could probably have paid for a good number of solid schools for my kids. But I have a kiddo who’s dyslexic, dysgraphic, and dyscalculic (just like her dad). To give her the best chance we could I gave up my job to homeschool. It means our “what next” is different than it might have been, not only for her but for her brother too. But I can’t focus on what could have been if things were different. It only helps my children if I move forward, and do it in as positive a way as I can.
My dad slowly went blind starting when I was a child. I never, not once, heard him complain about it. The only reference he ever made to the loss of his vision was that he was grateful he had enough left to be able to see what his last grandchild (my youngest) looked like before he went totally blind. It’s not easy to change your focus. I used to think about what life would have been like if my daughter wasn’t born like my husband. But then I realized that they have to live with it every single day. As a wife and mother, I need to figure out how to help them move forward in a positive way. You may need to mourn the loss of the dreams you had for your daughter when she was born, or the ones you made along the way, to get to what is. Then you can ask yourself, what’s next, and be excited about the answer.