I am here in the US on a work Visa, and my kid is getting into college undergrad in 2025. I understand the FASA process for AID and Grants are not for Visa holders. I am trying to find out if there are any scholarships he can try for being on a dependent visa. Also, do banks or any institutions offer loans for education?
If there are old threads please do point me and will be happy to know more from them.
There are many colleges that will provide merit scholarships regardless of citizenship or visa status. You will need to check with the schools your son/daughter has applied to (assuming s/he has high enough grades and/or test scores to receive merit aid).
I wouldn’t bother looking for outside scholarships. These are usually insignificant, require a lot of effort, and most are probably not available to international students.
Do you qualify for need-based aid? (Have you run the net price calculators on college websites?). If you qualify for aid, some (but not all) schools will meet your financial need. However, these are schools that are typically very hard to get into.
Can you take loans large enough to pay for college, as a foreign temporary resident? I do not know, but others here might be able to answer that question.
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What state are you in? Depending on the state and their public university policies your student may be eligible for in state tuition/merit there.
What does your student want to study?
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This may also depend on the type of visa OP is on. (More likely for an H1B/H4 dependent than a TN/TD dependent, for example.)
I think that the first two things to do are to find out whether your in-state public universities will consider your child to be an in-state student, and to figure out what you can afford to pay without taking on debt.
Perhaps the next thing to do might be to figure out whether and how you can borrow money for university, if this is needed.
There are a small number of universities that meet full need for international students. One obvious question is whether your child is a competitive applicant for them.
And then there is the possibility of a child returning to your home country for university.
Perhaps a slightly less likely but still possible option, particularly if you are working in a relatively more northern state, might be to consider universities in Canada. The best known of them are not cheap, but may be less expensive than private schools in the US. Some very good but less well known universities in Canada are for international students a bit less expensive than a typical cost for an out of state public university in the US, or in some cases perhaps even similar in price to an in state public university.
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