<p>Alright, so here is the gist of my situation.</p>
<p>I’m a Canadian, Caucasian male, with English heritage and about 86% average in secondary school. I am in Grade 12, so I graduate in 2012 of June.</p>
<p>My parents aren’t able to afford me or my brothers’ post-secondary, though according to Student Aid BC(I’m not sure what the equivalence is in the USA) they should be able to. This means I do not qualify for an official student loan from the government of Canada.</p>
<p>Further, as I am just graduating and haven’t had a paying job yet, I haven’t had a chance to build up any credit with any bank in particular. My parents probably won’t (nor will they likely be allowed to) co-sign for me and my other brothers’ who have the same year of graduation so I won’t be able to get a student loan from the bank.</p>
<p>I have looked through some scholarships, and while the potential for me to apply to 1K and 500 dollar scholarships don’t go by unappreciated, they don’t help much when your starting balance is 0. I do have some unique skills but haven’t found any scholarships which would apply them (I’ve been programming computers since I was about 10 years old, working with Java, C#, PHP, C and C++ - I have some fairly good demos I could submit in an application. HTTP Server written in C, a game engine written over-top Managed DirectX(I only chose managed DirectX & C# because at the time I wanted to put the game on the xbox - which cannot be compiled into native executable code without a very expensive license.)). Unfortunately, as most scholarships tend to require, I have a few volunteer hours and haven’t been too proactive in school other than my courses of study. I haven’t found any which are at all relevant to my hobby of computer programming - which is relevant to the degree I want to get (Electrical and Computer engineering).</p>
<p>I don’t mind getting a job and working but, never having been employed before, the job market out there even for a student is tough. My brother had to apply around for a couple months until my other brother found an opening when his manager asked if any family members would like to work at the theater. I was a bit late for the offer unfortunately.</p>
<p>What bugs me about getting a job and working though, is that I’m afraid that by the time I finally to get into university, I won’t be credited for any of the courses I have worked hard in now(Phys, Chem, Calc) and I’ll be forced to redo them. Which really sucks. Its also kind of disappointing when all your friends are graduating when you just start…</p>
<p>I know there are others out there in a similar situation and I was curious what they’ve done to overcome the obstacles.</p>
<p><em>Edit</em>
I’ve already been accepted into the school I’ve wanted to get into.</p>