Honestly I find if your opinion of "decent" includes in-state colleges then things get a lot cheaper, and there are tons more scholarships as well as a lower bar of acceptance. I mean seriously in a lot of fields the fact that you have the degree is going to be the most important thing, not necessarily where you got it from. Obviously an Ivy League degree will probably help a little bit, and a community college might be a little less useful, but beyond that it's not really too important where you get your degree. And lots of times state universities have really good programs in a couple of fields anyways, I know Arizona State is one of the top research engineering schools in the country (last I checked some places actually ranked it above Yale) and Northern Arizona has huge engineering job placement percentages right out of school since they focus on getting you into the workforce instead of on research. And hey, I saved some $24,000 dollars due to in-state scholarships, plus had a tuition a couple thousand dollars a year cheaper than out-of-state students do, and since I'm only a few hours from home I can easily get back for holidays, or move back during the summer/winter breaks to save money on housing if need be.
And on the matter of acceptance? As long as you are a C/B student and successfully graduated from high school pretty much all the in-state universities here in Arizona will take you without much fuss. They want your money, so it behooves them to enroll as many students as they think will pass.
That said my biggest pieces of advice if you are totally strapped for cash:
1) Go to a community college for your first couple of years to get your general education stuff out of the road. Check to see if you can transfer stuff from there to the in-state college you want to go to eventually.
2) Get in touch with the financial aid department at whatever school you want. Seriously, they often have list upon list of scholarships, grants, etc., many of which may only have a very small handful of applicants. I actually know a girl who funded her entire college career, all four years of it, through scholarships/etc. in the $500 or less category, since not many people were bothering with them. I also know that my university had something like $50,000 of unclaimed music scholarships last year, and similar numbers in many other categories. For example there was one $5,000 scholarship (that's basically 1 semester here + books) that if someone had of shown up with the required instrument, been able to muddle their way through their scales on it, and then had said "I'd like to go to your school" it would have been an automatic giveaway, because nobody tried out at all.
Seriously, don't sell yourself short, and do yourself the favor of at least getting in touch to see what your options are, there are plenty of chances for financial aid that doesn't require going into debt (and many others that do), and despite what many people say, in the vast majority of things simply having a college degree helps, if only to show to your potential employer a token of your commitment to something.
And hey, worst case scenario you could always serve a short term in the military to pay for college, though it obviously comes at the price of, you know, being in the military.
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Topic: [MILK] There were 12 eggs here what did you do with them? (Happy thread?!) (Read 16302136 times)