35 Tuition Free Colleges (With a catch of course!)

Read it. Fully. My take: You'll likely get in SOMEWHERE if you meet one or more of following criteria:

(1) Proven super-high academic achiever - REALLY super-high. (examples Yale, Harvard, Stanford etc.)
(2) Absolute Musical Prodigy.
(3) Deeply Christian. Very Deeply.
(4) Native American. (That's good - we do the same here in Canada - but we do it at ALL schools.)
(5) Foster child - or college-age person from low income family. (Some places - Must get Pell grants etc. School makes up the rest.)
(6) OK with frequent drug tests and immunizations.
(7) You want to learn trades at an all-male school, earn an associates in Masonry, Machine tools, Electrical etc.
(8) Some - to apply, you have to live within the school area or state. For one, you have to be a San Francisco resident.

Free tuition doesn't always mean free school - e.g U of the People. Not criticizing - just stating.

 

One I forgot - if you want (and have aptitude for) a career in the Forces -Uncle Sam has a free College (several) for YOU.

 

The tuition-free colleges always have a catch. Before finding here and the sister forum, I did searches for free/cheap colleges a few times. What always made me sad was that, at least at the time, there was no online option for any of these schools. Which meant that students were still on the hook for expensive relocation fees, unless they happened to live in the same area as the college or university. If you're in a position to need free college/university, you're probably also not in a position to just drop your job and spend money you don't have on even a Greyhound ticket to go spend 2-5 years at school.

Last I looked, most of the "free" options still required you to live on-campus and, often, required you to do at least part-time work at the college or university in exchange for less than minimum wage. If you got paid at all.

If you happen to already live near one of these institutions, they might be good opportunities. For everyone else, lists like this are just false promises that just serve to discourage even more people from pursuing a degree.

There are potentially cheaper/better options for a degree than even UoPeople, but they're usually not mentioned in a very favorable light on "degree information" sites because there is no money in it for the site. Yeah, most links (even to not-for-profit schools) are affiliate links, which means the site is getting paid to send you on a wild goose chase!

 

Cheer up, Rachel! Barclay College, a Christian (Quaker, I think) school, #18 on the list, offers $600 scholarships for online studies. I don't know whether that's per term, course or what. I'm kind of attracted by the historic location -- it's near Dodge City, Kansas. Sorta makes me want ta polish and load up muh six-gun an' mosey on down to th' ol' Corral. Yep, it sure do! Blammety-blammety-BLAM! Guess I'm not the Quaker type... oh well.

 

They are either small liberal colleges, or schools that charge and a leg and an arm; then give free tuition to people.

 

Exactly. There’s a lot of stipulations. For instance, my father is part Native American on his mother’s side. According to him, it doesn’t count for me because it has to be matrilineal. So since I get it from my father, it doesn’t count for me and I have no way to prove it. Of course, he could be full of crap. I don’t know. We aren’t close. But what I do know is that I always seemed to fall just outside of any type of qualifications for scholarships.

 

I think it depends on the tribe. If he's on the tribe rolls and is listed as your father on your birth certificate, it might count. If he's completely lying about being part native in the first place, of course that'll do no good.