<p>Fighter:</p>
<p>First you deserve a gold star for all that you have accomplished so far. I would be very proud to have you as my child. Your wanting to work full-time to help your family out really signifies your maturity. Like other I hope you do not “burn out” or ruin your health so please be careful. Also remember you are “just a kid” so try to enjoy some of the “fun” of high school too.</p>
<p>I would start looking at questbridge now. I don’t know if it is too late but I believe that in a student’s junior year questbridge will help with sat review and college visits. </p>
<p>A couple of other things:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>In terms of money issues your main focus should be at looking at colleges which give big merit award or no loans for financial aid. I don’t know what your overall income is but as entomom suggest run your efc calculator now so that you have a good idea of the schools that you should be looking at. </p></li>
<li><p>Review the list of schools that offer paid college visits (its in a link by kelliealexander) and write to those schools and explain your circumstances and see if you can garner an invitation for their paid vists program. It might be a little on the early side but it couldn’t hurt.</p></li>
<li><p>Although private scholarships are difficult to come by at least look at those that give some big aid like the coco cola scholarship; nordstroms dept store; national hispanic scholar; gates; horatio alger; mcdonald’s hacer program to name a few. I previously posted a listig put out by the national hispanic congressional caucus and congresswoman Lucy Roybal’s office.</p></li>
<li><p>Talk to your college counselor now about your situation. Ask her if she can keep you in mind for any waivers that you might receive the SAT and colleges. Every little bit helps these days. Also talk to her about your home situation but be careful because in our school district some counselors might alert “child protective services” about the fact that you are only sleeping one hour a night. </p></li>
<li><p>Colleges will definitely take into consideration the fact that you work full-time. Each college has a local rep assigned to your school or region. try to make a list of schools and contact that rep to tell them about your situation and ask them if they would take your working history into consideration with your application and where on the application you could put such information. It is commendable that you want to help out your family and it could not hurt you to let the local rep know about it. It has been my experience that making contact with the college local rep has always been helpful. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Good luck. I’ll be praying for you and sending any extra sleep hours your way.
itsv</p>