Well, from my experience, there is always SOMETHING. My parents, as I have said before, told me that if I wanted to go to college, I had to work hard to get there, and it would not come out of their pocket... That was not a necessity, but a choice on what I wanted to do with MY life.
There is TOPS. There are three different tiers. There are NO income requirements. The three tiers are GPAs, and ACT scores. This determines the amount of money that you can receive. The only reason you would pay this back is if you quit. You can qualify every semester after doing your FAFSA, which by the way will help you determine for which things you will be eligible.
(I was able to receive $4,000 a semester, plus an allowance of $600 a semester to spend on other things.)
There is the Presidential Honors scholarship. This is determined by your ACT score and grades, also. I am unsure of the amount it is, but this can be used for State Universities. I don't even remember signing up for this...but I got it. This one can also be gotten if you don't have great, but decent grades, if there are enough letters of recommendation from upstanding citizens and teachers, etc.
There are Pell Grants. These are determined by income. You do NOT have to be LOW income to receive help... They look at your parents' income, their bills and such and then tell you how much you can get. You can receive up to $2500 a semester if I am not mistaken... I received the full amount, and I think that is about how much I got.
There ARE scholarships that have absolutely NOTHING to do with income or grades, also, that you can search for online, like ones for reading a certain unlikely amount of books in a semester for $500, a $3000 one for the best prom outfit with a date made out of duct tape, etc. I received one for being in lots of community type activities that included tutoring and such. I believe I got $300 for that one.
All state schools have literary rallies and the such. On these days, they release info about testing for scholarships. You go in and you test in any or all areas... I tested in every subject available. What happens is like this:
To determine whether or not you are eligible, they look at your scores and if you score high enough, they will allow you to skip classes up to you level to save you money at their school... it is much like a loss leader at a grocer, it is made to get you into the door...but paired with these others, it worked awesome for me. I did not have to take any English courses except for senior English classes. You can test out in every subject available.
Many people are not aware, but when you sign up for fraternities and sororities, they provide you with scholarships if you are pledged and approved, along with it cutting you rooming costs, and many times your food costs,also, as many people buy groceries and cook in these housing complexes.
Signing up for an on campus job (mine was 3 hours a week working a desk in my dorm) allows for scholarships provided for payment. Mine paid about $700 a semester. Easy money.
If you sign up as a full time student, State schools usually offer certain breaks if you check into it... the one I got was from a section called "University College". If I met the criteria for hours and GPA, they gave me a break of a certain percent.
Also, if you sign up to go in the summer at a state university, there is a HUGE difference in price per semester, and you can still get all the other scholarships and grants at the same time, not to mention the fact that there is a smaller student to professor ratio, and MUCH easier to get better grades, and the semester is shorter. I signed up over and over for a program called "Summer Bridge", which was made for new students, to help introduce them to college life. I went to maybe 5 classes over a two month span, had at most 20 people in one class, AT MOST, and made great grades during that time as it was SO laid back and easy, which brought up my cumulative GPA, which made it easier to slack off in the later semesters if I felt I was burning out.
There are MANY MANY more that I could talk about.
I received all of these mentioned above, and I got left over money sent to me from the State University I went to in the form on a check for almost $3000 EVERY SEMESTER.
As I said, there is always SOMETHING that can be done. We are provided with waay more opportunities than ever before.
