Berea College is the highest ranked, most rigorous, and best funded “work college” - all admitted students get a full ride.
I’m not sure how they’d consider your situation though since they use parents’ income to determine financial eligibility. You may want to contact them if you’re thinking of a Fall 27 start or a transfer there - in particular asking what sort of documentation they’d need, if they even accept it, for them not to consider your parents’ income (I assume they’d need some proof you were kicked out and/or that they don’t accept you).
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oh ok, thanks for the tip!
Better than staying with relatives? Or better than staying home?
You need to look into rent costs+CC tuition (unless you can still get some merit scholarship - some CCs do offer them) and how much you’d earn working 15-20h a week.
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Better than staying at home. If I put in an Austin location, the tuition is $2500, which I can cover with FAFSA. I have a friend that is doing this with a roommate and the rent is $895 each I think. But if I get a job at H-E-B for example and work 5 days a week making $15 an hour, it should be attainable.
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OP,I don’t have much to add in terms of practice advice, but just wanted to wish you well and wish you strength and am very hopeful that it will all work out and you can live your authentic life. I don’t know enough to recommend specific resources where you are, but if you ever happen to see a Free Mom Hugs stand or t-shirt wearer while you are out and about, go get a hug.
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Thank you, I will for sure
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Look at costs and see what you can afford. Some community colleges have dorms.
You are unlikely to be able to sign a lease without a parent. I had to sign all my kid’s leases. So your friends share an apartment - but surely they had a parent sign to get them that apartment.
Unless you have substantial assets, you have no credit - so it might sound nice on paper but it’s not a reality.
Then it’s a question - if you need $2K a month for room and food, how will you afford it on a part time income?
It all comes down to money - and it’s not readily available to you like you believe.
What if you lose a job or it goes away - and you can’t pay your bills. Will your parents back stop you? If not, you’re wrecked for many years.
You are better to take a gap year and apply to a free ride like Prairie View….find out how competitive it is.
Wow I guess I’m in a pretty bad situation. Thanks for your input.
Your situation isn’t good for your immediate desires but it’s not impossible long term.
I’ve offered up the military - the easy fix - but you have to want the military and it’s not gay friendly best I can tell.
Get a job at Starbucks and go to ASU for free. Tons of majors - including CS.
Get a job full time, take a gap year and start applying for full rides at places like Prairie View, Alabama A&M and more. Yes, they are HBCUs.
Live with a relative and go to CC with them. Will they let you? That could strain relations with a a parent.
In the end, everything requires money - and you don’t have it. You think you have access but you likely don’t.
I don’t see schools like Berea as a possibility. Your family has money - they are simply choosing not to spend it.
There are kids in your situation - you are not alone - I’m talking about the budget POV. Lots of parents refuse to pay. If you think about it, you go to HS for free - and now you have to pay many thousands. Not everyone can or sees the value in it.
Talk to your counselor - but I don’t see any of the part time working, living on my own situations as realistic.
Others may think i’m wrong - but you are looking to thread a needle in a tiny tiny hole.
I’m just being realistic - sorry if depressing.
But maybe taking a year off and working and finding someone to let you crash on a couch or something - could be the best thing.
NE Texas and Central Texas CC have on campus housing. Whether there’s a freebie in there for you or something I haven’t looked so don’t know but you can…but again, where do you go at xmas and in summer then?
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To everyone saying “get a job at Starbucks” – that may, or may not, be possible! I live within 90 miles of the largest city in the United States, and the closest Starbucks to me is almost an hour away! Hopefully this isn’t the case for the OP of course.
OP, some posters will be more encouraging and some more pessimistic. Please don’t take everything people post about as gospel! They may be right, but they may not be. No one has access to all your information. Hang in there!
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I will, thank you!
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Nathan, you have been given a lot to chew on. No one here would blame you for doing your own “due diligence” (research), etc. It’s important that you own the process.
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Starbucks isn’t the only employer offering tuition benefits. Walmart, Target, Lowe’s, Chipotle, Best Buy, Goodwill, hospitals, many others provide tuition benefits that may cover at least online coursework. Do some research into specifics.
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Thank you for that tip, I will!
I love that idea and Austin is a LGBTQ friendly city from what I know! Maybe check out Out Youth: https://www.outyouth.org/ which is in Austin ETA: they may have resources that those of us who are not LGBTQ haven’t considered. Sadly, I don’t think your situation is rare in the LGBTQ community.
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You’ve brought this up a few times, and I have to answer:
You figure it out. You crash with friends, or get a job that offers housing (they do exist), or stay on campus over breaks. It can suck sometimes, emotionally, but it’s possible.
I fully appreciate your level of practicality, but there are also times when doing something that looks challenging or even irresponsible on paper can be the best choice. My situation as a teenager wasn’t directly analogous to the OPs (I was kicked out, so I didn’t have a choice but to deal with it), but severing that connection with my parents turned out to be a huge blessing for me. Well worth having to figure out how/where to live, or even to take on student loans to get myself through undergrad.
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And people make it happen when they are on their own with no resources for whatever reason, gay kids getting kicked out, Jews leaving ultra orthodox communities, etc. There is a way to make it work and there are support structures. Hopefully OP can research some of these and find a way.
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Sometimes you are forced. You have no choice. You read about people sleeping in bus stations, etc. I don’t believe this is a choice - and no, you cannot stay in a dorm over summer and many you cannot over holidays.
I’m simply letting OP know the things they need to look for.
Sure, they can be on their own, in a shelter, or perhaps a friend’s parent or relative will take them in.
You can plan for that.
I would not suggest anyone simply leave - and you’ll figure out a way.
That doesn’t seem an advisable plan to me. But yes, I’m a planner.
OP has a base to start from - so should plan from there vs. going out without a plan.
I feel for OP but sometimes the devil you know (home) is better than the devil you don’t - the outside world.
I hope things work out well somehow.
This thread is helping OP plan the next six months.
When parents won’t accept their child’s existence and want to keep them for 1-2 years in order to control/change/fix them, staying would be soul-destroying.
OP may not be elaborating, but just the situation OP is in right now is traumatic.
(I would also typically suggest someone in OP’s situation keep a bag ready in the closet with birth certificate, any ID/W2/proof of employment, credit or bank card&cash, toiletry bag&small towel, lock, change of underwear/socks&clothes, treasured stuffed animal and treasured object/book, journals, bars, ziplock bags+knife&spoon, bottle.)
OP needs to find a safe way to leave for college.
Everything needs to be ready as if parents were to try&stop him, throw roadblocks, etc. If the preparation wasn’t needed, no harm no foul, but OP needs to be ready because it happens. Adults here can think ahead and help him prepare so nothing stops him.
Often, friends or relatives step up. Being homeschooled, OP may not have a friend whose parents would gladly let them crash on the couch in the den and there’s likely no GC/school services available but if they go to a library or community center there should be resources, websites that can be checked out from a public computer that parents don’t check, etc. OP also needs to prepare for having roommates if relatives can’t help (sublets do exist, no parent needed as long as you can provide first and last rent deposits - which means saving all your part time job money and keeping some aside as cash&checking whether your parents have access to your bank account).
To attend Austin CC as a city resident, you need to move there&find a job there first. Once you’ve got an address and pay slips you can register at the CC, otherwise they’d consider you’re moving for education purpose which doesn’t make you a resident (ie., s.o who lives and works there, then decides to take classes, but plans on staying there.)
Sometimes, and more&more often, parents come around, even if it takes time or even grandkids. Sometimes, they don’t (*).
But a kid doesn’t have to stay in a toxic family where parents don’t say “we love you as God made you” but some variation of “you must be what we want you to be and we will destroy everything else” (even if hiding under the sin/sinner dichotomy). Leaving actually allows the parents to come to terms with reality without destroying the kid, and if they never do, it saves the kid.
Hopefully we can help OP find a safe way forward.
(* This may be more for parents reading this rather than OP - I won’t give a link because I don’t think A3O links are allowed here and also no title bc I haven’t checked whether the rating is Teen or not, but the most striking, tough story I’ve read this year deals with a toxic parent/child situation that wasn’t resolved, something we rarely see - in part because for people with a healthy or even dysfunctional family, it’s almost impossible to imagine so they/we ALWAYS want a “happy” ending where everyone is reunited. But even if parents and kids don’t, it can still be a happy ending for the kid who saved themselves.
In the well-written, unflinching, darkly humorous story, a middle aged adult is returning to their childhood home after the parent’s death, parent who sent them to “conversion camp” in Kentucky decades before. There’s no admission of guilt or regret by the parent, no reconciliation, no gesture. It was toxic, it remained toxic, and anyone reading knows the kid then young adult couldn’t have stayed. It’s incredibly sad to me that this could even exist (&based on the author’s experience). But it’s also not sad because the ex-kid is strong, successful, in a fiercely loving relationship, and it’s only sad for the parents who refused to know their kid. – There’s a dark humor line that stuck out to me, something like, Funeral director: “What type of funeral were you thinking of?” “Piranhas”. – Anyway, even when it seems hopelessly bad, it does get better.)
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My reaction to this discussion is that the focus on getting to college asap is not the priority. Being trapped in a home where you cannot be your authentic self or meet people is what seems to me to be the main issue. College can wait.
I also left home early, at 18. I didn’t take money from my parents for college either.
One of my kids is gay and one is trans and it breaks my heart to hear about the rejection their partners have experienced. In Massachusetts and some other states there is a lot of acceptance. And in MA community college is free.
You are coming out of a background of homeschooling, parental control, and parental opposition to your orientation. I am sure you have internalized some of this.
I would make sure to talk to a counselor but most of all, as someone else suggested, find a support group or two. Are your online interactions supervised?
College can be done all kinds of ways. And on all kinds of timelines. Congratulations on your hard work, grades, job performance. Your parents should be proud. Long term, I think things will work out for you. You have shown a lot of strength and self-regard by reaching out here.
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