Financial aid? college? ?

Question

ok so heres the story my mom is on disability and ssi. my parents are separated but i havent seen my dad in lik 8 years. i do not recieve any money for him because the government cant find him. i am going to be freshman in lik 2 weeks in high school. but i do not know will i recieve money for college? or financial aid. also i am passing all my classes with very good grades but not perfect.

Answer 1

Keep working hard in school, and I am confident that you will find that a lot of financial assistance will be available to you when you're ready for college in a few years. New York has some amazing programs to help promising young students afford college - in fact, New York has one of the best financial aid programs in the United States.

New York's best-known program is something called "TAP", which stands for Tuition Assistance Program. TAP is a state-funded grant, which means that the recipients of TAP funds don't have to pay that money back. You can be awarded up to $5000 a year in TAP assistance if you and your family really need assistance. That's on top of the maximum $4700 a year that you can receive from the federal government in a Pell Grant.

If you visit the Higher Education Services Corporation website (see the link below), you can download several helpful brochures that explain how to pay for college. There are publications like "Let New York's TAP Help You Pay for College", and "How You Can Pay for College".

It's good that you're already starting to gather information about the financial assistance that's available to you, but for now, the best thing you can do is concentrate on getting good grades, especially in your most challenging classes. Try to make sure you earn the opportunity to sign up for the most advanced classes - the higher-level maths and the sciences and the honors and gifted and AP classes. Good grades are important, but the best colleges want you to get good grades in challenging classes, not "Math for Business" and "Earth Science".

Good luck to you - I'm very confident that you will be able to qualify for a lot of financial assistance when the time comes!

Answer 2

Ok.  You don't use your dad at all.  Easy enough.

You use your mother's information.  You will see that you need to include her SSI (parent's worksheet A).

This is not a huge deal.  You've got a ways to go before you need to deal with the FAFSA.  Enjoy high school and we'll cross this bridge when you get to it.

Best of luck.