Two of my friend's are about to drop out of college due to financial reasons.?

[Hellou]

One of my friend's.. lets call her A still owes $700 for the fall 09 semester. She has no way to pay it. She used all of her financial aid, got all the loans she could receive, her family can't contribute, she can't contribute. She really doesn't want to drop out but it looks like she will have to. Does anyone have any ideas how she can get $700 to finish paying her fall 09 tuition?

My other friend, lets call him B, is trying to declare as an independent. His family has totally disowned him and he's 19. The university is trying their hardest to try to keep him from declaring as an independent. He recieves absolutely no money from anyone in his family. He still owes the university a lot of money due to finacial aid stuff being confusing. He finished all his paper work for declaring as an independent a few days ago which will take 10-14 days to process. Registration for next semester has already started last week.

I just want to know if anyone has advice to keep them in school. They both really want to stay at this university but petty stuff like this is probably going to force them to drop out. Tomorrow both of them are going to the financial aid office and bursar's office to try to figure anything out. If nothing happens they're going to give up. I really don't want anyone to drop out due to money, it's really sad. It kind of looks hopeless... They both can't register for next semester until the Fall semester is completely paid off

 

[nygiant3]

From what it sounds like, it might be best for A and B to take the next semester off to either go to a cheaper school or to find a way to pay for college because to be honest, it's not going to get any cheaper.

For A she could either go to a website called "FastWeb" which is made exactly for these situations, they find scholarships, grants, and other sorts of aid specifically for you (well the person doing the forms) and their usually small amounts (around five hundred) and can get higher. The only problem is that they usually need a submission of either an essay or something else, plus there's a wait to find out if you win it or not. Since that takes a little too long, the only thing A could do is to sell something or like I said earlier, take a semester off.

B seems to be doing everything right, once the forms go through the college will be forced to change any aid they give you to an independent, it'll just take a week or so to compile.

The best thing to do is to make your financial aid office a new home and the people that work there, your best friends.