I'm going to have to take a leave of absence 4 a semester because I can't pay. Are there scholarships?

Question

I want to take the semester off and work and get scholarships. But will regular scholarships sent to the school pay it off? It will be about 13 grand. I won't go into it, but i thought i was set for the year and ended up not getting the money because of a sudden incident and decided to go anyway. I'm not crying over this I'll get through it, but will this work?

Answer 1

Without going into it, it sounds like you were either arrested for drug possesion, you had a D or worse average in your previous semester, or you had to drop a class and became a part time student.

Either one of these will invalidate your financial aid through the FAFSA you're supposed to fill out. This would leave you unable to pay.

If you can't pay for the college, but have a very high (3.8+) GPA, you might be able to find some scholarships, but these generally account for 10% of financial aid overall. The bulk of it is through grants and loans. If your financial aid through FAFSA was cancelled, then you've lost your grants.

That leaves you with the choice of taking out loans or taking a leave and getting the money the hard way. Both of these are undesireable.

My suggestion -- find a nearby state school that you can get into with a low tuition. You should be able to work and get that sort of money while you're in school (I'm thinking about $3k/semester for tuition and fees, $13k is high). Or, you might be able to get loans to cover that amount, and still work so you can keep a car, food, etc.

If you don't think you'll be able to graduate (again, you didn't say if you were a freshman or a senior), you might want to consider just dropping out and working. You can make $30+k at Wal-Mart, one of my friends did this.

Answer 2

Scholarships won't pay for what you already owe. It will only pay for the current semester(s)

Answer 3

go to fastweb.com, its a free scholarship website, aply for grants, hope this helps