Most public universities will tie the residency of dependent students (taxes and FA) to the state the parent lives in.
How would the girls earn enough money to pay for an apartment/food/etc on their own?
The OP has already said she will NOT move to another state, take a gap year or two to establish residency, etc.
So let’s drop that idea.
If these girls are going to take a gap year, it should be to look for schools with guaranteed large merit awards to fund their college educations.
^ OP is realistic and has already said repeatedly that this isn’t an option as she’s not ready for independent living.
(There’s a huge difference in working full time and handling an apartment, and living in the dorms.)
To be helpful for the OP we should ask questions and we should make suggestions.
Regardless of how many posts one makes it doesn’t put us in the shoes of the OP.
Ultimately their family needs to make a decision, Not us. So even if you personally disagree with an idea it’s not up to you to shut it down. Rather all any of can do and should do is to come up with ideas.
So far we have heard options to:
- Go deep in debt for Cal, UW or Rochester
- Go to UH
- Go to an automatic merit school with rolling admissions
- Take a gap year and apply to WUE schools
- Take a gap year and apply to large merit schools
- Take a gap year in another state and work / gain residency / then go to school InState
- Play the military card (yellow ribbon) if it is available
Any more?
Again, unless we really want a long OT sidebar among adults, this must be confusing for a kid. Her first issue is what to do now. Not hypotheticals.
CYA. Cover your you-know-what. Know your fallback.
You may not like HI, but this is a big country and most will see it as a flagship. Doing well is the goal, making U contacts that help with getting summer internships or relevant work is more important than some perveived prestige. Then your grad program. If you decide against grad school later, then graduating with honors, some resume, and strong faculty recommendations.
I know you hesitate about UH. But in ways, you and Mom are looking at this summer, where you can say you’re going.
Better to look at 4 and 6 years from now, how you really max your future possibilities. That’s the hard work and your own success. Not the name of the college.
The OP and her twin, even if they were willing, would NOT be able to establish in state residency in WA within a year, or likely most anywhere else. All states have cracked down on it and WA was never easy.
OP, are you or your twin NMSF?
My D applied to transfer after 1 semester at Kapiolani Community College with a 3.8 GPA in 2009. She originally wanted sociology but later switched to undeclared. She was admitted as a spring admit to start Jan 2010.
The HS college counselor was shocked she was admitted. She later switched to and graduated in cinema.
I believe transferring into engineering is tougher but I hadn’t read that either twin was interested in engineering. S graduated from USC in engineering and took the very strict list of coursework from freshman year.
He did take one course at HPU and refused to take any other courses there as he did NOT think very highly of that school and its academic rigor. I have NOT heard good things about it and believe it’s prices are inflated especially for what you get.
I think getting an engineering degree from UH with honors and then getting a grad degree where ever you guys want would actually give you the most options. If you want or wanted regents scholarships at UH, you had to have decided early and had an advocate. Even without Regents, it’s quite affordable and if you want some experience outside HI, you could do the National Student Exchange for a term or year, to go to a mainland school (like University of Oregon or UMass Amherst) or even a school in UK.
It really is insane to me that your parents are contemplating debt of $200,000 - $300,000 and more to get your undergrad degree. This will really limit all of you folks in your future and make it VERY difficult to have good options for grad school. It will be a HUGE limitation for all of you–both students AND parents.
@HImom: The OP wants engineering/engineering science.
In any case, yes, if grad school is in the future, then it makes sense to get a cheap undergrad degree and spend on a Masters.
UH Manoa has a well respected engineering program. We have several friends whose kids got their undergrad engineering degrees there and were offered several engineering jobs, one even transferred from USC back to UH and was happier at UH.
Before S applied to colleges, we took a family trip to Rochester. S saw the 10-15 foot snow fences and decided he did not want to live in a place that had that much snow and decided he’d stick with a WARM campus. He was happy in Los Angeles–now he lives in DC and is OK there.
It can be VERY cold and a big adjustment from warm HI to snowy Rochester.
In CA a lot of kids go 2 years to community college and then transfer to UC. It’s cheap and admission into UC is virtually guaranteed. I don’t know the rules. And I know coming to CA isn’t easy, but could the girls come to CA establish residency and attend one of the many great CC’s here?
Reading all this is really sad and unfortunate for them.
The sad part is that OP doesn’t want to go to UH.
My S had a friend who went to UH for engineering. He had several amazing experiences there. He was able to work with a prof as an undergrad and also go to MIT for the summer one summer and Wyoming or MT another summer. He got his BS in engineering without debt and never looked back.
Graduating debt-free gave him tremendous options. I believe he did some post grad engineering work in Thailand and was having a blast. S went to visit him.
UH has Phi Eta Sigma and Alpha Lambda Delta – two freshman honor societies where you meet and do activities with other gifted kids. We went to the neighbor island and had several fun activities. We had lots of engineering majors in it when I was a member decades ago.
It’s not possible to establish residency for tuition purpose before hte age of 24 in California.
For USC, 3+2 transfers must apply into the usual competitive transfer admission process.
Sorry, as said, the residency rules are tough, pretty close to impossible. Sigh. As said, OP is NOT interested in establishing residency OOS. Repeated it as recently as this am.
Getting California residency as an unmarried student under the age of 24 is difficult (depends on the parents).
@ucb: I stand corrected. If the transfer is not guaranteed, then there’s no advantage over UH Engineering+Honors.
I met Gov David Ige at events for the honor society in the 1970s. Decades later, I learned he was admitted to MIT and other prestigious programs in engineering but didn’t want the family to incur debt, so went to UH and got his engineering degree there.
Adding to #363, they could go to UH or a community college in HI and transfer to another 4 year U for their degree.
They could also get their bachelor’s degree at UH and then grad degree at their choice of mainland Us.
Does it even matter where an engineer goes to school? Isn’t there a standardized exam that must be passed which is more important to making a living than where one went to school?
UH sounds pretty good to me in this situation. It’s true most just think of it as another flagship. A flagship is a flagship. I certainly would never hold it against someone for going to their own state school.