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[3man75]

Hello fellow bay 12ers,

I'm currently having my FAFSA pay for everything in school ol. I have tuition and books covered and even a little extra I'm.saving. I have a part time that gives me pocket money every week on Friday ((48$ a week.)) And I'm still living with my mom who cooks.

However, I want to move from Miami to Washington to attend university their. Why? Because I don't like party schools and want to get ahead. Plus Florida is not exactly  the place to live in unless your retired/retiring which is kinda good but if you want too be out of a town house and into one where the walls are yours alone, then bad.

When I told my friend about it he said it'd be good to see me leave but, that uni is expensive. I'm his words "unless your last name is Bush, Clinton, or Kennedy your going.to have debt. Lots of debt."

I heard that destroyes lives alot. So my question to the grads are: "Can college be paid for without taking up debt?"

I'm thinking about a psychology or economics major but haven't decided yet.

[PyroDesu]

Currently in university here, and doing my damndest to avoid taking even a single loan. Helps that I get an employee discount because of my dad, but it's still not cheap, and the FAFSA wasn't as kind to me (I qualify for my state's lottery scholarship at the maximum level, but that's still only 4000 a year).

Something you might not realize - the second you cross a state border, your tuition goes up insanely. We're talking thousands to tens of thousands, and possibly more, depending on the university. That getting through college debt-free can be done, I've no doubt, though it may be hard, but going out of state just ramps up the difficulty. You'll also likely lose qualification for a lot of things, possibly even parts of your FAFSA.

As for your major, I dunno - I'm a Mechanical Engineering major myself, with an eye towards getting a Master's in Nuclear Engineering and going into R&D.

[3man75]

How long do you have to live in another state on order to be "part" of it? An not get stunned with massive penalties?

[LordBucket]

"Can college be paid for without taking up debt?"

Not sure how applicable this will be to your specific situation, but most schools allows 75 out of 125 credits for a bachelor's to be transferred in. College Board, the same people who administer the SAT, also offer CLEP tests which are class equivalency tests accepted by a large number of schools across the country. Basically, buy the $10 study guide for the exam you want, spend a week reading it, then pay $80 for the test, pass and viola: transferable credit. And the Department of Defense offers the DSST, which is similar. Those are mostly intended to help people in the military earn degrees while abroad, but the tests are available to the general public also. Also, FEMA offers a bunch of 1 unit courses online, but those are pretty much for elective credit only.

The big catch with the CLEP and DSST tests is that with very few exceptions, they're generally transferable for lower division credit only. So if you want to pay a couple thousand dollars to skip your first two years doing general ed, you can do that. Whereas if you've already finished general ed and you now want an actual degree, very few of these tests will help you.

But it's a good way to shave off a couple years and a few tens of thousands of dollars off the time and cost of a degree.

[PyroDesu]

How long do you have to live in another state on order to be "part" of it? An not get stunned with massive penalties?

The only state where you won't be kept waiting is Tennessee, as far as I know. The others, it varies. Usually a year, I think.

This site lists proof-of-residency requirements for most states, but the information is about 14 years old, so take it with a grain of salt.

[3man75]

Seems like i may need to do a full time move if and stay for a year if i want to cut down on the out of state charges but that seems pretty unrealistic. Minimum wage is 9.95 in D.C (which is where i'm targetting to go) and apartments out of city centre are 1,400 on average according to this site: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/city_result.jsp?country=United+States&city=Washington%2C+DC

So other than savings and loans what other ways can i pay to live in D.C? I really want to go to George Washington University and study away from home while being with some friends. I'm not doing any of this immediately but i'm really just trying to have a general plan ahead. If i have a 3.0 could grants help pay me through?

[gimlet]

You're gonna have to learn how to do some legwork if you want to find some money-saving routes.  If you did some research, you'd find that GWU is a private university, and does not appear to have different charges for in state vs out of state students.  Sit down before you look at http://studentaccounts.gwu.edu/undergraduate-tuition as you'll find you have to pony up about $48,700 per academic year just for tuition.  The cheapest dorm plan looks like $7800 - they don't give a period, I'd guess it's per year?  Then add meals, books, etc...

So yea, get those grades and test scores up to shoot for scholarships - and be warned, 3.0 GPA is gonna be about the minimum for just *admission* to a highly competitive school like GWU, let alone academic scholarships.  You could try to find a job that offers tuition reimbursement as a benefit maybe GWU itself http://studentaccounts.gwu.edu/gw-employee-benefits , but it's gonna be kind of a chicken/egg problem getting a job with good pay/benefits without the undergrad degree.   Still it looks much more feasible to try some kind of work full-time/take classes part-time as you can spread out that hefty tuition charge over a number of years - whether you want to spend the time to do it that way will be your decision...

[PyroDesu]

You're gonna have to learn how to do some legwork if you want to find some money-saving routes.  If you did some research, you'd find that GWU is a private university, and does not appear to have different charges for in state vs out of state students.  Sit down before you look at http://studentaccounts.gwu.edu/undergraduate-tuition as you'll find you have to pony up about $48,700 per academic year just for tuition.  The cheapest dorm plan looks like $7800 - they don't give a period, I'd guess it's per year?  Then add meals, books, etc...

If a period is not given, it's typically a semester, or so I've found. And considering how most colleges work, putting tuition in terms of the academic year isn't a very good metric - schools (in my experience) charge per credit hour - if 3man were to take accounting at GWU, he'd be paying $1490 per credit hour. Assuming he stayed precisely at 12 credit hours per semester (full-time and no more, difficult to do and I do not recommend - you're probably going to go over anyways and having a buffer in case you need to drop a class is a good thing), he'd pay $35760 for one year's worth of tuition (source) plus fees, housing, meal plan, etc.

Not a cheap school to go to. Also, since it's private, you may or may not receive some of that funding from your FAFSA - I'm not sure, but I think a distinction is made between public and private for it.

[Baffler]

"Can college be paid for without taking up debt?"

Not sure how applicable this will be to your specific situation, but most schools allows 75 out of 125 credits for a bachelor's to be transferred in. College Board, the same people who administer the SAT, also offer CLEP tests which are class equivalency tests accepted by a large number of schools across the country. Basically, buy the $10 study guide for the exam you want, spend a week reading it, then pay $80 for the test, pass and viola: transferable credit. And the Department of Defense offers the DSST, which is similar. Those are mostly intended to help people in the military earn degrees while abroad, but the tests are available to the general public also. Also, FEMA offers a bunch of 1 unit courses online, but those are pretty much for elective credit only.

The big catch with the CLEP and DSST tests is that with very few exceptions, they're generally transferable for lower division credit only. So if you want to pay a couple thousand dollars to skip your first two years doing general ed, you can do that. Whereas if you've already finished general ed and you now want an actual degree, very few of these tests will help you.

But it's a good way to shave off a couple years and a few tens of thousands of dollars off the time and cost of a degree.

Be very careful with CLEP tests. They sound like a good deal, but I nearly lost my scholarship because of them. How? Minimum credit hours. LOTS of scholarships have credit hour requirements attached to them, mine for example requires that I have 30 credit hours per year. I thought CLEP tests would get me out of gen ed, but really all they did was get me out of the gen ed I needed and forced me to take the ones I didn't in order to fill up enough credit hours to get enough money to get through school. Of course those classes require you to buy books and whatnot on top of that, so I probably didn't save a damn dime from doing them. Unless you want a humanities or possibly a language minor, I'd say they're not really worth it.

[Bauglir]

Wouldn't you just wind up taking more of the directly-relevant classes at once? I mean, it might mean a really heavy workload, but unless those courses are scheduled so sparsely that there simply aren't enough in a semester it shouldn't be a problem (and that shouldn't be an issue at the undergraduate level at a reasonably-large university, at least by my experience in the US).

[gimlet]

There's usually a period (sophmore/early jr) where the only courses available are on a tight track (sort of a "gateway"), and you can't take any later ones without the prerequisites of the gateway.  ISTR for math, the field courses went like:  1st yr was calculus, 2nd yr was math 301-302, linear algebra, abstract algebra, proofs and stuff, and 302 was the prerequisite for just about every one of the upper level courses that would count for the degree.  Computer Science was similar - 1st year couple of intro programming languages, 2nd year was data structures and algorithms, although I think there were a few more language courses you could take concurrently so it wasn't *completely* gatewayed.

I did CLEPS/AP too and the other problem was that if you get rid of all the easy non-major stuff, your whole schedule is filled with tough homework/project-intensive courses, it's a real wake up call to suddenly have to try to keep up with all that all at once, semester after semester.  Be prepared for that, and for that to limit chances to "hang out with friends" if that was one of your main goals for your school years...

[Bauglir]

Oh, yeah. That's actually a fair point. Forget my comment, then. Damn bottlenecks.

[3man75]

I see. I think the smart thing would be to get my bachelor's at a state uni and then go.for.my masters at gwu.

[3man75]

What does it mean to minor for something in college?

If your major is psychology lets say and your minor is accounting does that mean you can work as an accountant when you graduate?

[acetech09]

What does it mean to minor for something in college?

If your major is psychology lets say and your minor is accounting does that mean you can work as an accountant when you graduate?

I have no clue, but it's easy to find out. Look up local jobs for financial positions and see what their prerequisites are. Maybe some entry-level position could pass with a Minor.

Also, do always remember that a degree != a ticket to a job, if you get a Minor in accounting and do accounting because it's a way to make money, employers might get the impression you aren't truly committed to a job. I started work out of high school since I couldn't pay for college, but am making a good living and successfully competing against applicants with a 4-year degree, simply because the employers preferred my work ethic, personal presentation, and my extensive work/intern experience I collected in high school.