College sucks...

[Crashed]

Time to show my age a bit.

I've only gone through ONE day of my senior year of high school. It's really fun, nobody expects anything from you (unless you're me and foolishly in charge of a lot of school organizations...), and you pretty much just get to do whatever you want.

That's because the entire year is spent focusing on college. I've never been one to stress about college, however... at the beginning of the summer, my parents decided to let me know (two months before applications opened!) that despite what they may have told me in the past, I have $0 saved for college.

Now, I never expected to not have to come up with some money on my own, though I've always been reassured I'd have their support.

So... as I stay up late before school tomorrow trying to finish scholarship application after scholarship application, I've hit a wall. My family makes a very decent amount of money. An amount so decent that I will likely NOT be receiving many of the scholarships that I apply for.

I guess this wouldn't be an issue if that money did not get diffused (and blown) into different things. There are three other children that they are raising, one is two be sent off to college two years after me. My family also has a knack for buying useless things (i.e. cars) at random and blowing all of our money. Everything I own (aside from food, clothing, and... room furniture, I guess) I've had to buy myself (my car, this game, and pretty much everything included). I do not receive any aid from my parents unless I'm in a REALLY big hole, which isn't a bad thing and I'm quite used to it.

Paying a $30,000 tuition? I'm freaking the hell out.

I have always wanted to leave Texas as far as colleges go. Now... it's looking like I'm stuck here for cheaper costs.

This is stressing me out to no end. I don't know how I'm gonna pull this off.

/rant

[iggy880]

Dude, that's my exact story, except for I have an older brother who already went through college. Yes he had some better grades, but he got to go out to Maryland. Me, I'm about to move in tomorrow for Sophmore year. I wanted nothing more then to get out of state, I even got accepted to a few I wanted(not the one I really wanted mind you) and only applied to one in state for my parents sake(coincidentally I'm in Texas as well) Anyways, long story short, I tell my parents which of the ones that took me I want to go to, and I'm told they expect me to stay in state, at least for the first few years, because they can't afford it. Basically I got shafted with my safety school in state because my parents support to go wherever I wanted dropped more then half-way through applying. And now my brother, two years younger then me and now a senior, is looking at just about any school he wants and I'm betting he'll get it.

I was embittered at the start of last year and decided to just go with chilling more and took studying to easy and hurt myself and had to dig myself out of a hole second semester, and need to even more this year if I intend to ever transfer. So I don't recommend taking college lightly. I did all AP class in High School and I thought it would be so much easier then that, and sometimes classes are but for the most part if you go in thinking like that you lose way to much ground. Though I will say the school I ended up at is a lot better then I thought and its a good time and good to live at, though it is far to close to home for me(I went home each weekend last year, mainly to get restocked on food without paying myself) but its something I gotta make due with.

Anyways, I'm stuck at UNT in Denton if you wanna check it out, though not sure what you plan to major in or where you live, but its not bad. Though I will say that if I could do it again, with the knowledge that I would be stuck in state because I had no support(aside from parents paying some of loan interest) then I think I would've applied to a few others though I still may have ended up here and that wouldn't be to bad.

[razoras]

Is that 30K a year or for 4 years?

[Bitter Babe]

You could possibly still be able to get out of state, depending on the school and financial aid package. Public schools don't give the best ones, maybe look into some smaller private colleges, they are usually more generous with financial aid even if they are more expensive.

[Grae Knight]

Word of caution tough love incoming..

Cry me a river. Get a job and work through college and get student loans to supplement what you can not get through work. I never thought I would say this, in my college years many people worked their way through college with no financial help from family. My brother who is now a successful Nuclear Engineer and a Vice President with Duke Power worked at Burger King for 4 years while attending NC State.

My other brother dispatched at night for the campus police and joined the National Guard to help pay for school.

I worked at Food Lion while attending college and when I could not get enough hours there, delivered pizzas.

Tighten up and prepare yourself for a tough 4 years, but when you get through it you will be 10 times the person you were going into it. I know it sucks that you had thought your parents were saving money to send you to college but rest assured, with the economy the way it is and has been, alot of students will be running into the same situation.

Lastly, there is nothing wrong with state colleges and Texas does have a few good ones. Unless you plan to major in some very specialized field you should be fine. Even if you do, for example, you can get a Bachelor of Science (a general degree in science) and then get a Masters in your more specialized field somewhere else afterwards.

So Cold, you are going to be fine. Just stay focused on what you are doing the last year of high school and keep your hopes up. Colleges have tons of programs to help out "independent students", I know, I was one of them.

Good luck dude and keep filling out the scholarship apps, you may get lucky

[bpphantom]

Athabasca FTW!

[RedSwitchblade]

Originally Posted by Grae Knight

Word of caution tough love incoming..

Cry me a river. Get a job and work through college and get student loans to supplement what you can not get through work. I never thought I would say this, in my college years many people worked their way through college with no financial help from family. My brother who is now a successful Nuclear Engineer and a Vice President with Duke Power worked at Burger King for 4 years while attending NC State.

My other brother dispatched at night for the campus police and joined the National Guard to help pay for school.

I worked at Food Lion while attending college and when I could not get enough hours there, delivered pizzas.

Tighten up and prepare yourself for a tough 4 years, but when you get through it you will be 10 times the person you were going into it. I know it sucks that you had thought your parents were saving money to send you to college but rest assured, with the economy the way it is and has been, alot of students will be running into the same situation.

Lastly, there is nothing wrong with state colleges and Texas does have a few good ones. Unless you plan to major in some very specialized field you should be fine. Even if you do, for example, you can get a Bachelor of Science (a general degree in science) and then get a Masters in your more specialized field somewhere else afterwards.

So Cold, you are going to be fine. Just stay focused on what you are doing the last year of high school and keep your hopes up. Colleges have tons of programs to help out "independent students", I know, I was one of them.

Good luck dude and keep filling out the scholarship apps, you may get lucky

This. Time to stop crying and start looking really long and hard at your outlook on life. College, in my opinion, is a necessity. These aren't walls, they're obstacles. I lived my whole four years on loans, LOST my scholarships after the first semester, and became an RA to undercut my costs.

I still graduated with 60,000 in debt and a useless degree.

The only thing that's stopping you from making this work is you. Don't rely on anyone else, because Grae is right - tough situations merit tough decisions. In four years you'll be on your own anyway, and what then? If you got help now, you'd be worse off after graduation trying to find a job with the pile of debt you're going to have.

So start growing into your future role of mature and self-sufficient role now, and you'll be ready for anything. I wasn't. I wish I had been.

[Bitter Babe]

Have to agree. I wish I had done things differently before I went to school and during. I have a BA in Political Science I haven't used and still have debt because of it (and I'm 30 and still have no real idea what I would like to do). I worked while going to school full time and had to move back in with my parents but I had no choice. I got my paralegal certificate while working full time at my current job.

Do you have a job right now?

[itsthesheppy]

Hi. College grad here.

My experience? I only really applied with any enthusiasm to a couple colleges, and mostly because my parents would have effectively disowned me if I didn't seek higher education. I ended up going to Goddard College. I'm currently in the possession of a $17,000 piece of paper that I can wave in poeples faces if they ask for proof that I can spend a couple years researching shit, and then write coherently about the stuff I researched.

What has the degree done for me? More or less nothing. I've never had a job that required the degree, unless you could substitute teaching, which was a joke because it payed peanuts and can be done easily by chimps.

Unless you go to college to learn a tradeskill, or unless you have very specific ambitions for a masters degree, then a bachelors is a fairly useless degree. It's about one or two degrees more prestigious than a high school diploma, and costs tens of thousands of dollars more. You will be in debt for the rest of the forseeable future with no true benefit.

If you DO have specific masters degrees in mind that you're shooting for, I offer you this caveat: the guy who repairs my car has a masters degree in zoology. He's in his late forties, and has never once had a job where he worked with animals. You have NO idea, at your age, where your life will take you.

Unless you're at an Amadeus Cho level of forsight and planning, in which case you have nothing to worry about, and I for one welcome our new future overlord.

[Yin]

Minimize the amount of loans you have to take out as much as possible. I have friends who are well over $20k in debt right now, and the school we attended was cheap ($9k a year). If it's $30k a year then I think you need to look elsewhere. You'll be paying that back in the afterlife unless you're going to make $150+ k a year after school once you get into your career.

Honestly, if you just go to a school in-state that is a few hours away from home you'll be fine. I wanted to originally go to Florida for school, or one of the many HBCUs down South, but I picked a university that was two hours from home and it worked out just fine. Whenever I wanted to go home I could, and I wasn't stuck on campus during Thanksgiving Break or Spring Break like my friends who were 6+ hours away from home. You'll find it convenient (especially Freshman year) to be close enough to home but at the same time far enough to get the distance you need from it.