<p>I am a high school senior from Louisiana and I will attend WashU in St Louis, MO. My parents are moving up to Pennsylvania in a few months so I will have absolutely no ties to Louisiana anymore. When I graduate college and apply to medschool, which state will I considered to be a resident of for tuition purposes?</p>
<p>Good question. Check the policies posted on the med school websites.</p>
<p>The way it usually works, is that you are considered a resident of the state where a parent lives when you have completed college. There are exceptions, but generally college students are declared dependents on their parents’ returns that year they graduate, so that state to which the parents are paying taxes and having lived a year is the state of residence. And who knows where your parents will be living at that time.</p>
<p>However, schools have their own defintions as to who is considered a resident for admissions purposes, tuition purposes, aid purposes, and, yes, they can all differ, and differ from the student’s declared state of residence. College students like my son can vote in a different state, have their cars and drivers licenses be from that state or still another state and yet not be eligible for in state tuition in those states if the rules so state. Confusing? Yes. It is. The usual fallback positon is, however, as I stated in the first paragraph. If your parents are residents of a state for a year, and you are a college student, you are generally considered a resident of that same state for most college purposes.</p>
<p>When Op applies to med school, he will be an independent student. Where his parents live will not matter in the residency process. If his permanent address is at his parent’s home, then he will be a pennsylvania resident. If he is a stellar student, then the school will have no problem giving him in-state tuition. Op has 4 years to work it out by which that time s/he may have a different plan.</p>
<p>Not necessarily…</p>
<p>Many students apply to med school during the summer between junior and senior year of umdergrad.</p>
<p>Also, when my son applied to med schools, they all asked where his parents live. Unless you’re older or married, med schools tend to consider your residency as to where your parents live. Of course this really only matters for public SOMs.</p>
<p>The OP will likely be considered to be a PA resident…especially if he spends summers and winter holidays with this parents. Also, his drivers license will likely need to be renewed sometime during his undergrad years. I don’t know if where he gets it renewed will also come into play. It’s doubtful that he’s going to renew in LA.</p>
<p>Most state schools will not consider you a resident of a state if you are just there as a full time student with your parents living elsewhere. For those coming right out of college, your parents’ state of residence would not be questioned if they meet residence requirements. IF you are out of college and working in a state on your own, that is not where your parents, a one year rule often pertains. It can vary from school to school, however.</p>
<p>Friends of ours had this problem when they moved to Michigan. UMichigan has a requirement that you have to have lived in the state for one full year before you can claim residency status. They did not have that when their son was applying to the school, and was therefore treated as OOS for that first year in terms of tuition. How admissions classified him, I don’t know. That can be a whole other story.</p>
<p>To make matters even MORE confusing–some medical schools look at where a student graduated from high school when determining residency. For example, my younger D is applying to medical school next year. She is self-supporting and lives in another state, but since she will have fewer than 1 full year in residence in her new state (and won’t be able to fill a state tax return as an independent for the year prior to her application since she was a full time student for more than 6 months of that year), she is NOT considered a resident of that state at the time of her application. (And she has that in writing from the Dean of Admissions.) She is however considered a resident of the state where she graduated from high school even though she no longer lives there and attended college in a state that is neither her high school residence nor her current residence. (She has this in writing from the Dean of Admissions.)</p>
<p>Driver’s license is only one of the documents medical schools require to determine residency. D1 had to provide ALL of the following to prove her in-state resident status for medical school: high school diploma or equivalent, driver’s license, voter’s registration, car registration, lease or official mail [utility bill or bank statement] with her name & address on it, most recent state tax return. Some state medical schools will also ask for bank records and insurance information.</p>
<p>I would strongly suggest that the OP write to the Dean of Admissions at LSU and ask. If the answer is OP’s in-state for LSU, then keep the email until it’s time to apply.</p>
<p>With public state medical schools residency can make a big difference in acceptance chances, so it is important to know what states would consider you a resident for those purposes. Then the crazy thing is that the in state tution might be a whole other story.</p>
<p>^^Exactly D2’s issue. While she’ll be in-state for admission in the state where she went to high school, she’ll be OOS for tuition purposes everywhere.</p>
<p>It would be very important to read the website and residency requirement for each state’s schools. My DD was faced with this question and needed to make an active choice for her state of residence and then be certain to correctly do all the things on the state form, like driver’s license, car registration, voter registration, health insurance, banking, etc. to make sure she did not inadvertently end up being a person with no state.</p>
<p>And as the above posters have stated, admissions residency is not the same as tuition residency, so check both rules, pick a state and make sure you meet their requirements. Chances are that if you choose the new state, they may require you to have, at some time, spent 12 consecutive months there OR be a dependent of your parents in order to be a resident. This could affect your choice of timing for the applications. Step back and think it through, knowing that you need 12 months of residency BEFORE you submit the application, then you also need to be a resident for the 12 months after the application and before matriculation.</p>