Paying for college without financial aidAnswered
Hello,
My family is middle class, but we don’t qualify for any financial aid. None of my family is helping me pay for college and I work a minimum wage job. I’m hoping that I get scholarships through colleges with my 3.9 GPA and college courses, but I’m not sure if I will. Do you have any recommendations for how to pay for college even though my parents don’t fall into the income bracket for financial aid? How does this work when they aren’t helping me pay for college?
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1 answer
Unfortunately, two things are true of FAFSA: 1. They give the least appropriate aid to the middle school, 2. It is very hard to declare independent status to receive aid unrelated to your family's finances and pay for your own college, "my parents won't pay" is stupidly not a good enough reason for them.
Usually these are your options:
- Delay going to college until you can afford it and possibly declare independent status.
- Go but take out loans, which may or may not be worth it depending on how much you have to take out and how prestigious your college is. Of course, if you go to an Ivy League and make six figures straight out of graduation, who cares if you have to pay off some debt.
Also, apply for scholarships and apply to schools that give generous aid/merit scholarships.
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