Residency, Independence, and Financial Aid Issues

BigTex
Mon, 07 Aug 2006 13:39:30 +0000

I have a young friend who is currently taking classes at a community college and plans to apply to university for fall 2007. I’ll outline her situation as briefly as possible:

She holds dual citizenship (US/British), having been born in the United States to British citizens. She grew up mostly in the US, but spent a few years in England as a pre-schooler.

She completed her sophomore year at a pretty good big-city high school in May 2002. She was a student in good standing at that time, with good but not spectacular grades, but she just wasn’t into the high school scene, so when her mother moved to a new school district, she elected to enroll in a high-school-by-correspondence program offered by Texas Tech University. She had always wanted to live in England, so in March 2003 she left for England with her mother’s blessing. There she lived with her older half-sister and brother-in-law, and she attended the local school. She also worked as a custodian at the school so she could contribute financially to the household. During the next two years she completed her US diploma through Texas Tech and prepared for her A-levels. She took her A-levels and applied to a few universities in England. Her results were good enough to get her into University College London, but she had decided that she no longer wanted to live in England. She married her English boyfriend, and moved back to Texas this spring. They lived with her mother for a few months, but have now moved into an apartment of their own. They both have jobs. She’s been taking community college courses this summer in addition to working, and has been doing well; at the end of the summer she expects to have A’s in three academic courses and two PE courses, and a C in algebra.

Her mother helped out with some of the cc expenses for the first summer session, but the young couple will be handling all expenses on their own from now on. The mother has just moved out-of-state for a new job, in fact. The father lives in Texas but will not provide financial support; he has declared her as a dependent in years past, but will not this year.

Is she considered a legal resident of Texas? If she decides to attend university in another state, moves there, and she and her husband both start working there, how soon will she be a resident of that state? I assume US universities will be interested in her A-levels as well as her US high school record? Will her years in England put her into some “none-US” category of applicants? She has looked at a few applications, and finds them difficult to deal with as they ask a lot about her parents and so forth; does she need to look specifically for schools that have programs for “non-traditional” students? What are her prospects for need-based financial aid? Are there any special scholarship programs for non-traditional students she should know about? Does anybody have any other information you think she should have?

Finally, and this part should probably go in another forum, but I’ll throw it in here, too: She plans to major in archeology. She wants to go wherever she’ll have the most and best opportunities for field experience. There will be financial constraints, of course. Eventually, she hopes to earn a doctorate. Anyone have any suggestions?