Question: Just how "little" does one actually have to make as an independent adult student with no dependents and no spouse to qualify for financial aid these days? I'm not talking about loans or scholarships -- mainly any grants (pell etc.) Any ideas on how that works? If they look at my taxes (I have my own business), do they count ALL of my income or only my income after all expenses are taken out for the business? Any comments appreciated! Reed
How much? Well it wouldn't hurt to have a few kiddies. My wife and I and my son are in college and we do pretty well. We've made a conscious decision to do without for our college years. I work a part time job but without the financial aid, we would be utterly lost. (i.e. "Fries with that?") From what I've been able to tell from my distance education and full finaid at three institutions... EFC (estimated family contributions) are expected after $12,000.00 at least according the federal computations in which I've participated. After that, the variables become more numerous. Have you completed your Fafsa? Nothing happens without that. I would suggest that you do so quickly and check out your SAR. Your EFC will be listed at the end. A zero EFC means full aid. There are several online calculators available, just do a simple search to see; and, many schools have them built into their websites. If you are going the distance route, be aware that there is a short-sighted movement away from allowing distance students their full financial aid. The reasoning seems to be that since a distance student is at home, she/he doesn't commit the same hours to study and therefore needs less in the way of salary replacement. I must say horses**t to that. I have rarely found this to be the case. Hopefully this trend will fade away. We shall see. In the graduate world, I have seen this trend at the US Sports Academy, at Warren Wilson's short residency MFA program and several others. Read the small print under fin aid policies. Hope that helps a tad.
One More Oh yeah, WGU is another school of the above ilk. Had it not been so, I would have jumped on that particular bandwagon.
