I come across this read… thought of sharing if at all it will benefit you or someone who is in need… https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/23/your-money/financial-aid-offers-college.html
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Seriously, if you haven’t lived smack in the middle of people who want to talk to you about Jesus all the time, don’t judge what she’s saying about the exhaustion and wanting to move. I don’t have it nearly as bad as she does but I feel what she’s saying.
She’s said she doesn’t want to stay in Alabama; give her enough respect to take her at her word.
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@girlrejected, have you considered just moving someplace else, someplace where you think you might want to go to school and live, establishing yourself as independent, and going from there? If you go to New York (state), for instance, get a job and support yourself, then in a year you’re eligible for SUNY’s free tuition program, plus you’ve done some exploring of the world that you wouldn’t have otherwise. If in the end you don’t want to be there, you’re still free to apply to other places.
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@sybbie719 is this true? I don’t think it is…but asking you for clarification.
Bennty is correct. Not only SUNY but also for CUNY, which has many fine colleges in its own system.
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Yes. I’m a huge fan of both systems. I suggested SUNY rather than CUNY only because supporting yourself as a young person without a college degree is quite a trick in the city – quite a trick anywhere, but certainly easier elsewhere in the state. Once you’ve got that degree, though, opportunities do open up, and NYC has long been a destination of choice for people who have got to shake the hometown dust off their shoes.
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If you want to be prejudice against someone for something that they didn’t do, I can’t stop you. But the world would be a much better place if people would stop judging people by the actions of others.
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Incidentally, for those dinging @girlrejected for aiming too high, her strategy was sound for someone in her position. The very large fin aid comes from the schools that have it to give, and OOS publics are seldom generous with kids from out of state, particularly if they’re not URMs. That’s likely to become a tighter situation as enrollments decline and the publics are under increased statehouse pressure to reduce anything that smells like extra expense, including fin aid for OOS kids. The people on this board tend to be very well-off, and amounts of money that seem negligible from that perspective are often dealkillers for people who need to know their bank balances to the dollar.
Pell+loans+job for kids without family money and hot family connections to hook them up with something solid – this solution also tends to be an exhausting and uncertain way of doing it, esp if the kid is dependent. It’s easy to say “you’ll work x hours”, but in truth you don’t know how reliably you’ll be scheduled, or when, or whether a promised summer job will be there when summer rolls around. It’s also likely to leave her exhausted and unable to pay good attention to her schoolwork, which was supposed to be the point. I see this dynamic regularly. As a prof, it leaves me in the position of having to decide whether to punish the exhausted, sleeping kid with bad grades, knowing that a bad grade can mean the end of college for a good long time, or to say fine, you’ve got a B, the grade means nothing next to how you’ve been set up, just get through and get your life started. Really, anyone who complains about grade inflation needs to spend some time watching this dynamic in action first.
If @girlrejected really wants out, then a strategy and priority rethink may be in order here, after some crying and recovery from rejection, and coming to terms with the idea that things aren’t going to go the way you’d been planning for and assuming for years now. They’ll go some other way. On your side, you’ve got the fact that you’re young and have miles of time, and the only person you have to think about supporting is yourself (I’m assuming).
First, you know you don’t want to be in Alabama or the Bible Belt. But “I don’t want” is not a way to get somewhere. “I want” is. Where do you want to go? What places do you actually know about? Some exploration might be the first thing you need to do. Rather than throwing yourself at a school you don’t much want like it’s the last lifeboat on the Titanic, think about what you actually want for yourself, where you’d want to be. And, if you have the moxie, go give it a shot. Get an apartment, a roommate, a job. Try a new place, find out what the fields you’re interested in are like there. And if you don’t care for that place, try another. It doesn’t have to happen all at once.
Open up a map, have a look, and think of the map in terms of “this is the beginning of my own life” rather than “I have a college admissions emergency.” Does that make any difference?
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I don’t know NY’s rules, hope sybbie ways in, but even though a student lives independently of their parents they are not treated as independent for federal financial aid purposes until the age of 24. Meaning, they will have to provide parental financial information on FAFSA (and CSS if appropriate) until then. There are very specific criteria for claiming independent status on FAFSA, and unfortunately supporting oneself between the ages of 18 and 23 isn’t one of them. Federal Student Aid
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In NYS you are not a dependent student for state aid (TAP) until you are 35 years old.
Unfortunately OP is being provided misinformation regarding the Peralta Scholarship (by HESC).
Op cannot simply move to NYS, stay for a year and become an in-state resident. Op would have to prove that she is not financially dependent on her parents (In order to get in-city/in-state tuition rate at CUNY/SUNY.
[quote]
Step 1: Determining Your Eligibility
If you fit one of the descriptions below, you may be eligible for one or more NYS student financial aid awards under the DREAM Act:
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Your permanent home is outside of NYS and you are or have ONE of the following:
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U.S. citizen
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Permanent lawful resident
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Of a class of refugees paroled by the attorney general under his or her parole authority pertaining to the admission of aliens to the U.S.
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Temporary protected status, pursuant to the Federal Immigration Act of 1990
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Without lawful immigration status (including those with DACA status)
AND you meet ONE of the following criteria:
[color=red] 1. You attended a NYS high school for 2 or more years, graduated from a NYS high school, and enroll or enrolled for undergraduate study at a NYS college within five years of receiving your NYS high school diploma [/red]OR
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You attended a NYS high school for 2 or more years, graduated from a NYS high school, and enroll or enrolled for graduate study at a NYS college within ten years of receiving your NYS high school diploma OR
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You received a NYS high school equivalency diploma, and enroll or enrolled for undergraduate study at a NYS college within five years of receiving your NYS high school equivalency diploma OR
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You received a NYS high school equivalency diploma, and enroll or enrolled for graduate study at a NYS college within ten years of receiving your NYS high school equivalency diploma OR
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You are or will be charged the NYS resident in-state tuition rate at a SUNY or CUNY college for a reason other than residency.
NYS Higher Education Services Corporation - The Senator Jose Peralta New York State DREAM Act
We’re not talking about Peralta, which is for kids with visa/immigration issues that would have blocked them from receiving aid. See here: IV. RESIDENCY – The City University of New York and https://www.suny.edu/smarttrack/residency/
@Mwfan1921, yes, she’d have to establish herself as self-supporting. NYS is a big place, and I’m guessing that there are kids busy establishing residency all over college towns, just like in other parts of the country. Go to Ithaca, Buffalo, any of the other big college towns, find a roommate, get a job, take some time to wander around and see what a place is like.
Establishing herself as self-supporting does NOT move the needle for FAFSA and CSS Profile (before the age of 24), which are required for federal and institutional financial aid…meaning both will require parent financial information. If she doesn’t need federal and institutional financial aid then it’s a moot point…but, seems like even if she did get full tuition at a cuny/suny, she will need money to pay for room and board and other expenses, no? Or she can work and go to school part-time.
I would be interested in hearing how you expect a recent HS grad, with an EFC of close to zero, to do this? How would they get to NY from Alabama, or wherever (just to keep it not focused on one person)? Where would they stay while trying to find a minimum wage paying job? How would they pay for this place to stay, or food to eat?
Keep in mind that OP has not been back since 4/26. While I will keep the thread open, there really is no reason to debate the finer points without feedback from OP.
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You drive, not realizing that keeping a car in NYS is vastly more expensive than keeping a car in AL. Once in NYS, you probably don’t drive much, but now you’re in a place where buses are, and you become acquainted with local transit and intercity buses.
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Low EFC doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve never seen more than $20 at once, or that the internet doesn’t exist. You find a roommate through the usual online channels and show up with enough money to take you through a couple-few months, well under $5K total. Your monthly expenses will likely be around $1K-1200/mo. Room, your share of utils, food, the things you won’t know you need till you get there. Because you’re likely living with students or other young people who know the area, they’ll be able to give you advice on where to look for jobs, possibly even hook you up.
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You get a job. It doesn’t matter what the job is. Probably you get two or three jobs at first. Anything to get money coming in.
I was looking for my own digs at 16, supporting myself at 20. You mess up, but you also learn fast. The mechanics are complex when you get granular but overall “be poor but getting by on your own somewhere new” is not that complicated when you’re on your own, responsible only for yourself, and in good health, especially when you have a time limit and purpose in mind.
@skieurope, I mention these things to help kids who’re in this fix start thinking practically about how to go about doing something like this. It doesn’t matter what the state is, though local COL is important, and it’s good practice in investigating what an area’s like to live in before you get there.
Op will never be eligible for NYS aid unless her parents have a physical presence in NYS.
From that perspective it does not matter if student is self supporting away from parents.
Students are not independent for NYS aid until they are 35 years old.
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Where are you getting this from? It turns up in no NYS docs I find. It also doesn’t even make any sense. Say you get married and move to NYS when you’re 27, you buy a house, you get a job, you live there, you’re financially independent, and two years later you decide you want to go to college. NYS isn’t going to tell you you’re non-resident.
Rules here: https://www.suny.edu/sunypp/documents.cfm?doc_id=402
This is not OP’s situation. How does OP pay for college? Under what you are suggesting, OP would not be going to college for free.
She would not even be eligible for NYS State AID.
As a single independent student, OP would have to make less than $10,000
https://www.hesc.ny.gov/pay-for-college/financial-aid/types-of-financial-aid/grants/tap-faqs.html
A married 27 years old student is independent for federal aid. & state aid (probably will not get much in federal aid unless they were able to get excelsior).
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I think maybe you’re misunderstanding.
If she moves there and sets up as a financially independent person, establishing residency as people do all over the country, and then applies to a SUNY school, she’ll be applying as an NYS-resident student, and her HHI will be well under $125K. Her tuition cost under the Excelsior scholarship (I see none of the parental/age requirements you cite for that) will be $0; her Pell will be applied, and then if there’s any cost left over, Excelsior kicks in. After that she still needs to come up with room, board, etc., but she’ll have access to loans, meaning that even if she doesn’t get a bunch of other little scholarships, she won’t have to be working herself to exhaustion in order to pay her rent. Min wage in NYS is $12.50, so even the first year, with $5500 in loans, if she’s working 18 hours a week during the school year and 30 hours a week in summer, with a couple weeks’ vacation, she’s getting by. Good incentive to do better than minimum and pick up a couple extra scholarships, though.
Anyway – if she does that, she’s relocated herself, she’s got a good state-U BA, and she’s an independent human being at 22. She’s also committed to working a few years in NYS/NYC.
Also, the age for independence on the FAFSA is 24, not 27.
My D was accepted to Goucher last year with a full tuition scholarship- even after that and the pell and the federal loans she would still have been short of full COA.
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