<p>The University of Kansas may be your best option. The Univ. of Alabama is also worth applying to, but has experienced an explosion of popularity over the past two years due to its generous merit scholarship program. Personnally, I like both schools. Both have beautiful campuses & really nice students.</p>
<p>So, you're at 18 credits which is essentially first half of freshman year. Do what I suggested at one point, enroll back in your cc, take enough credits between now and this time next year (15 now, 15 credits in fall, plus 15 from your current 18..disregard the D) and you will have 45. Then apply to the universities that guarantee transfer in as a junior from that cc and require 45 credits for their scholarships. Honestly, I think that might be your only solution. </p>
<p>I haven't gone through all of your posts, but are you supporting yourself? No financial help from parents in terms of your first quarter in college and your future quarters? If you are self-supporting, and don't have a good income (with only being out from high school one quarter I imagine you aren't earning a lot) then wouldn't your EFC be somewhat manageable? Why was it a sudden realization at the school you were in that it would be so expensive, and better for you not to return? Did expected financial help fall through? Did you talk to that college's financial aid office prior to dropping out? You may have addressed all of the above in other threads, or felt no need to address them because you had already checked for financial aid help and didn't get the help..so sorry for asking if it isn't helpful.</p>
<p>Well, I took six courses at a community college, but I also took three courses at a four-year university, so I probably have somewhere around 30 credits (though I got a D in one of the classes). I'm currently living at home and working part time, but even if I were living in my own apartment, wouldn't I still have to report my parents' income, since I'm under 24? </p>
<p>The sudden realization came when I realized that instead of working 15-20 hours a week and going to school, I'd have to work full time while attending school full time. We were expecting more financial aid, yes.</p>
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<p>So far I haven't found any full rides to transfer students; the scholarships which require 45 transfer credits are not full rides.</p>
<p>Your age has nothing to do with it. It is whether or not your parents claim you as a dependent on their taxes. If they don't, their income isn't part of FAFSA, even if you are staying in their home rent free.</p>
<p>Really? I think that my mom claimed me as a dependent last year. If she doesn't claim me as a dependent this year, then my FAFSA will be based on my income from part time work only? Are you sure about that? (I'm not trying to be rude, it's just that I've heard differently.)</p>
<p>If that's the case, then I should convince my mom not to claim me and then just apply to schools which meet 100% of demonstrated need.</p>
<p>Your age has everything to do with it. If you are under 24, it is almost impossible to be considered "independent" for financial aid purposes, unless you are a veteran, married, an orphan, etc. The rules are very strict -- otherwise, everyone would claim to be independent.</p>
<p>Forgive me if I am wrong. I had heard that the key was whether or not your were claimed as a dependent on taxes, and I didn't know FAFSA had an age issue.</p>
<p>So, claremarie, even if a student moves out on their own at 18, and their parents don't claim them, they aren't considered independent? I find it very hard to believe that all of those single 18-23 year olds, who don't go to college and rent apartments etc., are considered still dependent on their parents.</p>
<p>I looked again at the FAFSA site, and I don't know where I got the info that if you aren't claimed you are independent. claremarie is correct, and for more detail see this link:<a href="http://www.fafsaonline.com/printable-fafsa-form/FAFSA-Help-Guide-ebook.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.fafsaonline.com/printable-fafsa-form/FAFSA-Help-Guide-ebook.pdf</a>
when I look at it, the relevant section was on page 13..sometimes links mess up page numbers so focus on "step 3" for independent student info.</p>
<p>Actually, the reason I was skeptical of your claim is that my sister had to take out a bunch of student loans when she went to college, even though she was 22 years old and didn't live in the same state as our parents!</p>
<p>3321, the federal rules that determine who is independent **for college purposes<a href="as%20spelled%20out%20in%20the%20FAFSA">/B</a> are very strict and have nothing to do with whether their parents claim them on their tax forms or whether they provide them with any support.</p>
<p>(Cross-posted with 3321)</p>
<p>I just checked the Spring schedule for my community college and the registration deadline for the Spring semester just passed. There goes my idea of taking 15 credit hours in the next few months and still making the transfer student deadline for some schools. -_-</p>
<p>Maybe I need to talk to a guidance counselor. This is all very complex, and not in an interesting way but an unpleasant, bureaucratic way.</p>
<p>Rocketsurgery, make an appt with an advisor from the cc tomorrow. CC's are less rigid about the dates than 4 year uni's. Even if they stick with that deadline, a guidance counselor/advisor at the cc would be very knowledgeable about 4 year university requirements/scholarships, and financial aid, and assist you with your future plans. That person would probably be much more helpful than anyone here could possibly be.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>Your age has nothing to do with it. It is whether or not your parents claim you as a dependent on their taxes. If they don't, their income isn't part of FAFSA, even if you are staying in their home rent free.>></p> </blockquote>
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<p>I think this has already been clarified. This is not true. Independence for TAX purposes is VERY different from independence for financial aid purposes. </p>
<p>Maybe the best thing to do now is work full time this term and bank the money. Take a full load of summer courses at the CC and perhaps consider finishing a two year degree there. Some community colleges have excellent articulation agreements with four year colleges, and perhaps yours does. Depending on your major or the college, you might want to see if the four year college has any kind of co-op program. These programs have you attending school and working alternate terms. It does take a little longer to finish, but if your job placement is a good one, you get experience AND enough money to pay the next semester's bills. Just another thought.</p>
<p>Yes, CCs might be forgiving of deadlines; I suggest you go to your local CC and check into their Distance Ed courses; it might be easier to catch up in one of those courses as opposed to a traditional, classroom-based one.</p>
<p>You do not say where you are, but have you gone over to the closest state U and talked to the financial aid folks?</p>
<p>Yes, I'm thinking about talking to a guidance counselor at the private school which I attended for a quarter, and/or a guidance counselor at the local state university.</p>
<p>Update: </p>
<p>I called the university which I dropped out of and left a message for an admissions counselor. In the message I basically said that I'm going back to school and that I'm considering reapplying to said university, but that I want to explore my options. If and when the appointment is set up I will talk to the guidance counselor about their university but also try to get them to help me see my options in general.</p>
<p>I called the community college which I have credits from and asked if there is someone I could talk to about getting financial aid to transfer to a four-year school, but I was told that I'd need to talk to whichever four-year school I'm applying to. Basically, there's no analogue to the high school guidance counselor on the community college level, even though the whole point of going to a community college is to transfer to a four-year school. I'm a bit perplexed about the response I got. I mean, I paid them good money to take six classes there, and they won't even talk to me about getting financial help at a four-year school? Seems a bit rude to me.</p>
<p>I'm sorry, but the most they could do is tell you how the federal aid system works. Dealing with each 4 year colleges FA office is not the cc colleges job, it's yours (or your parents). You know what the government wants from you (fafsa) and will give you in aid. You have to figure out how to make it work.</p>
<p>Rocket...it's not the CC's responsibility to figure out or get information about financial aid. It's not the GC's job at the high school to do that either. </p>
<p>Financial aid information is best received FROM the school(s) to which you plan to apply. There are thousands of colleges and their financial aid policies vary wildly. No one person (the GC in any place) should be expected to have these answers for you. </p>
<p>Just FYI...the job of guidance people is to academically assist you. In high school, this would involve course selections and help in planning post high school whatever...college, vocational school...whatever. At the CC, it would involve making sure your courses will either result in the awarding of a two year degree OR be courses that will result in your being able to transfer those course into a four year university or college.</p>
<p>Rocketsurgery. Did your guidance counselor in high school talk to you about financial aid in the college you ended up in? Or did they just discuss FAFSA and looking at the school's websites for scholarship info? </p>
<p>From what I know about cc academic advisors, they are similar to high school counselors in that they can tell you what the four year university requires of its' applicants.</p>
<p>I think you could have gotten quite a bit of help from that cc counselor if you didn't just focus on the financial aid, but asked about getting the additional 15 credits, despite missing the deadline for registration. Once you are back in at the cc, you can make appts with the counselor to discuss specific requirements for the universities you are interested in transferring into...both course, gpa requirements and scholarship/financial aid info. </p>
<p>High school guidance counselors also wouldn't be able to provide specific financial aide info, is what I am trying to say, other than telling their students to fill out FAFSA and CSS for the schools they are applying to.</p>
<p>You have two different issues: gaining the credits needed to transfer in, and financial. The first step is getting those credits since the universities, according to searches you have done, want 45 credits from their transfer students. I hope you can afford to take those courses at your cc. Once you are well on your way to getting those credits, start the conversations about financial aid...</p>
<p>Well, I never spoke with a guidance counselor in high school, and apparently I had the wrong idea about the sort of guidance they offer. </p>
<p>I'm a computer science guy, and to me it's silly for guidance counselors not to have information about which colleges offer what types of financial aid. That would be like having a database and only being able to use one key to look up entries. With SQL, for example, you can get a list of entries which have certain values for any of their columns. So if colleges were represented by tables whose columns contained various pieces of information about them, you could say:</p>
<p>SELECT * FROM colleges WHERE act<em>full</em>scholarship</p>
<p>and you would get a list of colleges which offer full scholarships based on minimum ACT scores.</p>
<p>What you're saying is that the only way to look up colleges is by name, so in order to find which colleges offer full scholarships based on certain criteria you'd have to go to the websites of every college in the country and see what scholarships they offer. That seems a bit ridiculous to me. To look at a thousand schools would take a hundred hours.</p>
<p>The point is that my main criterion for school selection is whether or not they offer full rides for certain ACT/GPA combinations. So it's a bit backwards to advise me to look at the schools that I want to attend and then see what kind of financial aid they offer.</p>
<p>If it's truly the case that the only way to narrow down the colleges in the U.S. is to do manual searches, then I might not go to school at all: I'll create a domain-specific search engine for scholarships instead. In fact, that gives me an idea...</p>
<p>Okay, FastWeb is garbage. It takes ten minutes just to register, and you have to enter the schools you're thinking about applying to. That defeats the purpose. Plus, they spam you every other page with annoying advertisements. I went through ten or so pages of bull and then left the site.</p>
<p>NextStudent wants a bunch of personal information as well, and they're hawking predatory loans.</p>
<p>The search engine at apps.collegeboard.com is a bit better, but it doesn't ask you for your GPA, SAT score, or ACT score. It doesn't allow you to specify a minimum amount for the scholarships. It basically spits out a bunch of generic results.</p>
<p>brokescholar wants you to supply a bunch of personal information and register. For the sake of inquiry, I registered with fake information, and to my pleasant surprise, they asked me for my SAT and ACT scores. However, things went downhill from there, as they next asked what schools I'm interested in. I don't know, brokescholar, I thought I'd first narrow it down to the schools which offer massive scholarships for my test scores and GPA. Oh, wait...</p>
<p>I could keep going down the list of google results for "scholarship search engine", but it's very late and I need to go to bed. If anyone knows of a decent scholarship search engine that doesn't have to already know what schools you're interested in to locate scholarships (and doesn't need any irrelevant personal information like your real name or address--this is just a flat-out design flaw), please let me know.</p>
<p>I still think it's absurd that you can't say to a guidance counselor, "Here's my GPA, here's my ACT score, here's a list of extracurricular activities. What colleges/scholarships am I likely a great candidate for that will cover more than half the cost of attendance? What colleges/scholarships am I likely a great candidate for that will cover the full cost of attendance?</p>
<p>If they can't answer these sorts of questions, they're not offering "guidance" at all. They obviously know little about the financial aid opportunities in this country. Sure, we can't expect everyone to know the scholarships offered by two thousand different schools, but guidance counselors are supposed to be experts, aren't they?</p>