I’m a junior in high school wanting to study ME. I currently have a 30 composite ACT with 31M/31S/30E/29R. I also have an UW 3.5 gpa with majority honors/Ap courses. My parents are divorced, so I filled out the FAFSA forecaster thing with my mother and I’s information and it came back saying I wasn’t eligible for most aid. Along with this, my parents don’t plan on helping me with college aside from a small college savings account with less than one years tuition to most colleges. I’m looking at Iowa State. I had UW Madison on my list but due to it’s price that quickly changed. at Iowa I should be able to get $8000 yearly scholarships, bringing my total to about $25000 yearly. Any suggestions or ideas on how I can qualify for aid or any other colleges I could look into?
FAFSA4caster only estimates federal aid (Pell grant up to about $6k). You want to run the net price calculator on each college’s web site to check what each college may offer. However, with divorced parents, please read http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/2083835-faq-divorced-parents-financial-aid-and-net-price-calculators.html first.
How much will your parents actually contribute? If too little for you to be able to afford any universities at list price or on need-based financial aid, then you may need to go scholarship hunting.
Some of the few remaining full tuition or better scholarships that do not appear to be super-competitive:
http://www.pvamu.edu/faid/types-of-aid/scholarships/university-scholarships/
https://www.tuskegee.edu/programs-courses/scholarships/freshman-scholarships
https://www.uah.edu/admissions/undergraduate/financial-aid/scholarships/merit-tuition-scholarships
Are you from Iowa? If so, Iowa and Iowa State might be best price wise, but South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana schools are fairly cheap. Kansas and Kansas state too, and MIssouri is still recovering from bad press from about 3 years ago and was offering some good aid.
Are you thinking of engineering? Iowa State is great.
He must be OOS for Iowa stating the fees he did but it’s outstanding for engineering.
But it seems in Illinois like everyone is going to Alabama just due to their merit. I had a patient yesterday who’s daughter is there for no other reason in a stem field. Loves it there and has a great internship this summer.
Put Clarkson University on your list. If you can stand the cold and isolation for 4 years, you will come out with a good job at the end.
You’ll probably want to target schools that are FAFSA only or consider the CSS profile, but don’t require the non-custodial parent’s financial information. The good news is that there are a lot of those schools in the Midwest.
Illinois Institute of Technology might be another to look into.
I frequently read about good scholarships at the non flagship Texas universities on here, such as Texas Tech and UNT.
Do your parents understand that nowadays it’s impossible to pay for College on your own and you can’t just take loans, they must? You are allowed 5.5k in federal loans for freshman year, that’s it. Outside of super lucky states (where do you live? might be one of those 
) paying for college is now out of reach for most middle class families. 20, 25, 30 years ago it was difficult but possible, to “put yourself through college” at a public university. If the minimum wage had increased like college costs, it’d currently be around $50 an hour. In short. … you have few solutions if our parents won’t help.
Everything beside the 5.5k federal loans and your parents’ contribution will come from scholarships provided by universities (but, as noted above, they’re few and far between - would they be okay sending you as far as Alabama for Tuskegee University or UAH?).
What’s your EFC? Will your parents be able to pay that EFC? Some universities provide good financial aid for students with low-ish EFCs. Run the NPC on Grinnell, St Olaf, Macalester. They’ll use BOTH PARENTS’ income.
Can you afford test prep? Improving that test score by 2points would improve your odds greatly.
Is there a college you can commute to?
What’s in your college fund? Are your parents still paying for that? Will they at least give you back the AOTC if thy qualify?
@MYOS1634, OP is from Illinois.
ALewis, your parents might think you’ll get aid because your siblings did, but now that your mom returned to work and has an above average income your aid will be different. Have them start running NPCs at various colleges to see what the costs might be.
What colleges did your siblings attend? Did your parents contribute to their costs?
Sorry, missed the IL part (NOT a lucky state) and the ME part. ME is going to make things even more complicated because 1) engineering is not offered at all universities 2) it requires a higher score than other majors just to get in let alone get a scholarship.
University of Alabama-Huntsville would offer 100% tuition if automatic scholarships remain the same for next year. You and your parents would have to cover room and board, books, and personal expenses. If you work part-time during school years, full time during summers, and take the Direct student loans, that should add up to ~$10,000 a year you can personally contribute - probably enough to cover room and board. Can your college fund cover any remaining costs?
Does Huntsville have a good enough engineering program? I was looking at UA at the main campus. Right now I could get 80000 over 4 years, i’d walk out with about 30k in debt after I used my college fund. Also I’m considering taking the ACT again and studying super hard for a 32 to get full tuition, since the last 2 times I didn’t study as much as I should have
Siblings attended small schools locally for teaching and finance. They aren’t the brightest. I guess you could say I got the smarter genes.
They don’t understand since both my sisters got a lot of aid. Also I tried calculating my EFC but it wouldn’t let me since I needed to do my FAFSA forecaster. I got stuck in an infinite loop of FAFSA forecaster, EFC calculator and NPC.
You can only borrow ~$5500/year, so take that into account.
And dissing your siblings’ intelligence isn’t a good look. Being a good test taker doesn’t make you smarter.
You may have gotten the “smarter genes.” But you most certainly missed out on both the “humble genes” and the “kindness genes.”
I’m a nice person. They haven’t made great decisions in life and and a bunch of other stuff. There’s a big picture i won’t be describing on here.
I’m not just looking at it academically. Choices in general
You can"t afford to think in terms of “how good is that school”. You must think in terms of “can I afford it”.
Unless your parents come around and understand they’re expected to contribute, OR unless your EFC is low enough that you would receive lots of aid at meet-need colleges, you’re stuck.
I’m sure that if your siblings made “bad choices” in life, your rigorous curriculum and 30 ACT must seem really terrific for your parents and they must think you’ll be showered with merit money. Unfortunately, if you explored the links, you can easily see that it’s unlikely 
BTW are you a boy or a girl?
Can you answer the questions upthread (about being within commuting distance to a college, your parents understanding they’d have to take loans for you, etc.)
Illinois is a particularly “unlucky” state to top it off.
Yes, study for the ACT like your college depends on it, because it does. (I don’t understand why students would take standardized tests without preparing but you have two more chances, this Spring and in September.)
For every additional point you raise your ACT score, you will get more scholarship money. That is 100% in your control and achieving a higher score may be the best (or even only) path to a traditional 4 year college experience for you.
Is living at home and commuting to UIC an option? https://catalog.uic.edu/ucat/colleges-depts/engineering/mie/bs-me/ If not, are there any schools with ME you would be able to commute to?
Yes, UAH is a very good school for engineering.