<p>My parents recently got divorced and my dad lives in another country now and refuses to pay for my college! </p>
<p>My mom does not have a job so her income is 0 besides child support payments, so when applying for FinAid will they see my dads income or just my moms if I live with her?</p>
<p>FAFSA only schools will just look at your mom, Profile or IM schools (most privates) will look at both and any new spouses.</p>
<p>so i should look for FAFSA-only schools?</p>
<p>Mostly every school (if not all) take the FAFSA. And if they require more information (like for private colleges) they’ll ask for the CSS Profile, which would give them a more holistic view of your financial situation. You can also get merit-based scholarships at some of these schools so I think you should look for any school that you are genuinely interested in.</p>
<p>onthefly, you may want to investigate schools that give good merit aid as well. There’s a sticky at the top of this forum and numerous other threads, if you search for them. You don’t mention what your dad’s income is, but at the 300 or so Profile schools nationwide, he would be required to submit financial info. Luckily, there are far more schools that do not require Profile than do:
<a href=“https://profileonline.collegeboard.com/prf/PXRemotePartInstitutionServlet/PXRemotePartInstitutionServlet.srv[/url]”>https://profileonline.collegeboard.com/prf/PXRemotePartInstitutionServlet/PXRemotePartInstitutionServlet.srv</a></p>
<p>I see you’re from TX and have a good gpa and SAT scores over 1400. You should probably start with some financial safeties like UT and TTU and then add privates where you would be very likely to receive significant merit aid. If your mom’s income is fairly low, you may also qualify for federal grants such as Pell and ACG. If she ended up with significant reportable assets, you may do well to see if she would meet the criteria for the simplified needs test. See pages 4-6 of this doc for more info:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/111408EFCFormulaGuide0910.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ifap.ed.gov/efcformulaguide/attachments/111408EFCFormulaGuide0910.pdf</a></p>
<p>onthefly-</p>
<p>Yes, focus on those schools that want the FAFSA but not the Profile. Good news is this is the vast majority of colleges out there and includes many very generous schools. You’re in good shape.</p>
<p>Thanks guys, unfortunately many of the schools i was interested in use the profile including: Rice, USC, and Colorado College which were all my top choices/ reaches. </p>
<p>Will UCSD, UCD. UCSB, Colorado Boulder, or Miami grant generous finaid?</p>
<p>Not the UCs, they give little aid to OOS students. </p>
<p>While the majority of schools may be FAFSA only, the maority discussed here on CC and of interest to CC members are Profile schools.</p>
<p>ya thats what ive found. I will forget about the UCs, what about Colorado or miami?</p>
<p>From a recent blog post…</p>
<p>You can rank, evaluate, compare colleges based upon how they treat financial aid; or how generous they are. Let me show you how </p>
<p>First of all, you need to estimate your expected family contribution (EFC). There is a calculator at Collegeboard.com that works fairly well.</p>
<p>Now we need the cost of attendance (COA) from the schools you are interested in. Each school will have a different cost of attendance. This can be found at the colleges websites, Collegeboard.com, Kiplinger, or a dozen or more other websites.</p>
<p>Subtract the EFC from the COA to find out what your financial need (FN) is at each of the schools. The formula looks like this </p>
<p>COA - EFC = FN</p>
<p>Now multiply the financial need at each school by the schools financial track records: % of need met; % of gift aid; % of self help (also available at Collegeboard). This will provide you with how much money the school is likely going to give you, and consequently, how much you are likely to pay at that college.</p>
<p>And Voila! You now have a fairly accurate estimation of your out of pocket costs and at each of the colleges. You can now see which schools are generous and which are not. Youll be surprised. You are proabably going to find out that some of the schools that look cheaper in the beginning will actually wind up costing the most in the end.</p>
<p>Colorado-Boulder is not known for generous financial aid for out of state students. Many kids from D’s high school apply to Colorado every year (which is out of state) and the aid packages from Colorado are always among the worst received. Lots of loans. Very little grant money.</p>
<p>Add to this the fact that the Colorado had massive cuts to the state’s higher education system’s funding this year–and things don’t look terribly hopeful.</p>
<p>wow my college list is really getting cut down to size!</p>
<p>Is Colorado College the same as Colorado in Boulder?</p>
<p>no, boulder is the state flagship of colorado while colorado college is a smaller liberal arts college in co springs.</p>
<p>And Colorado College uses the profile</p>
<p>Onthefly, have you looked at Trinity U in San Antonio? FAFSA only, good merit aid, very good school. According to their Common Data Set, they met 95% of need in 2008.<br>
If your mom has no income, and your dad is only paying child support, you will need to include more financial safeties than you might have originally planned on.</p>
<p>For those looking, here’s the list of schools and scholarships that use the Profile:
<a href=“https://profileonline.collegeboard.com/prf/PXRemotePartInstitutionServlet/PXRemotePartInstitutionServlet.srv[/url]”>https://profileonline.collegeboard.com/prf/PXRemotePartInstitutionServlet/PXRemotePartInstitutionServlet.srv</a></p>
<p>thx dragon i will look into it</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>At least you’re going in with your eyes open, which is a very good thing! It’s very tough to find out in April that you can’t afford any of the schools you applied to. So now you can build your college list with both financial safeties and financial maybes. You may get great offers from the maybes and no one here can really tell you what will happen. If not, at least you’ll get offers from good schools that you can afford. It will work out.</p>
<p>I didn’t think you were talking about CO in Boulder…so the info Wayoutwestmom posted was about the wrong school. </p>
<p>What is YOUR instate flagship university? (did I miss that somewhere)</p>
<p>It appears the OP is from Texas. OP, carefully go through the merit aid threads and a build a list that has appropriate financial safeties that you would be willing to attend…then you can add the “wish list” schools. As an aside, most of my kids’ friends who are attending the “glamour” out of states like Boulder and the CA unis have parents that are paying full freight.</p>
<p>To the OP…you need to have a range of colleges on your list. FIRST THING TO DO…have a discussion with your mom about what she IS able and willing to do to help you financially with college. Then go from there. Once you know your family financial contribution from your mom, you can realistically build a college list. You might be able to apply to some more expensive schools, but you will at least understand that if financial aid is not forthcoming in a certain amount, you won’t be able to go there. This discussion with your mom is VERY important. It’s not realistic to just put together a college list in a vacuum regarding family finances and what the family WILL be contributing annually towards your college costs.</p>
<p>You should look for schools that are financially possible for your family AND schools where you might qualify for merit aid as well. In addition, as others have said…look at FAFSA only schools where your dad’s information will not be required. Check the Common Data Set for average awards at these schools BUT keep in mind that these are AVERAGES. Your award could be well below that…or above…really no way to predict where you will fall regarding this.</p>
<p>If you are from Texas, look at UT-Austin which is a fine school. Are you eligible for any of the Texas college scholarship money?</p>