<p>I don’t believe I was being harsh. College is four more than one year. Presumably the student is looking for instate tuition for all four years of college. I believe this will be an uphill quest.</p>
<p>The OP, and anyone else in a similar situation, has THREE issues. The first is getting instate tuition for all four years, the second is need based aid, and the third is the FAFSA.</p>
<p>Public universities in every state have regulations for instate residency status for tuition and this varies by SCHOOL in many states. In other words, you have to check each college for their policies. Some states do have provisions for the students of divorced parents. CA’s Condit is one way to look at this, but as pointed out, one year only.</p>
<p>Getting instate residency status does NOT guarantee getting need based aid from CA public universities. The vast majority of state need based aid comes in the form of the Calgrant and this student’s eligibility for that would need to be checked with the Calgrant guidelines. Since he/she is not graduating from a CA high school, this would at least be questionable.</p>
<p>Then there is the FAFSA issue. The FAFSA is federally regulated. It is very clear that only the custodial parent is listed…the parent with whom the student resides greater than 50% of the time in 2012 MUST be listed on the 2013-2014 FAFSA.</p>