How should a student pay for college if their parents refuse to pay and FAFSA gives only loans to them?

Firstly you might want to start looking at going to a cheaper school. Try going to a state school or even community college where you can afford to pay for it yourself for the first two years. Most of the gen-ed credits transfer fairly universally. Then after you've established yourself as no longer a "dependant" of your parents which usually means you have to prove you've supported yourself for 2 years in most states, are married or are in the military it's your income not your parents that the financial aid groups look at for qualifiers for grants/scholorships etc... Then you can transfer to a school more befitting of your test scores and grades and do so at little to no cost to you. Another option is joining the ROTC. You shouldn't have too much difficulty getting in with those scores. Uncle sam pays for 4 years of school up front and after you pay Uncle Sam back with 4-6 years as a commissioned officer in the military. During this time the military will also pay full tuition for you if you want to go to grad school in the evenings and the experience and money isn't all that bad. Yet another option is to find full time work and go to school in the nights and weekends. This is fairly exhausting (trust me on that one) but gets the job done. Depending on your skills and connections it shouldn't be too hard for a bright young person to find a job making 30k a year which would easily cover state schools giving you money left over for rent/expenses. Final option is to get creative. My brother worked part time while going to school and to make up the rest of the money he donated blood plasma three times a week (30-50 dollars per trip) and made the occasional trip to the sperm bank (200 dollars per trip) and used his skills to his advantage by tutoring other students for money and helping someone write the occasional research paper etc... With enough ambition and drive it's easy to find the money you need for your education.

You could do work-study or take a reduced course load while you work. There are loans that you can take. Possibly consider a state school for the cost-effectiveness. Hope this helps!

You can claim independence if A) you have a child, B) your parents don't claim you on their taxes C) you are 24 years old. find out if your parents claim you and apply for as many scholarships available. Write letters to different companies asking for sponsorship lastly get a job and work at it. show your parents that you are truly interested in getting and education mabey they will come around and pay for you to go after a year. All else fails delay enrollment to a major university and start at the community level it's cheaper and you can take some of your core courses to start

its called life and life isnt fair. apply for the grants again after NOT lviing with parents for a while (liek a year). also get a JOB.

The student should apply to fafsa as an independent and probably get more money to pay for college and also they could look for grants that are high enough to pay for college.

I'm sure this isn't the answer you want, but I'm going to give it anyway. Take the loans. I had to make my entire way through college on only loans, I know how you feel. But the degree you earn in the end is a great reward for going into debt. You'll be able to get a job and make enough money after that to pay them off. Debt isn't a great thing to get into, but for an education, I feel it's worth it.

Do what everyone else does and take out loans and get yourself a job. Stop looking for handouts.

Your best option is to appeal to your financial aid office to be considered "independent" on the FAFSA. If you are deemed independent (which your school is solely responsible for deciding, BTW), your school will be able to "ignore" the parent sections of the FAFSA when calculating your eligibility. Assuming you don't have *too* many assets and income in your name, your independent status will make you eligible for additional loan funding *as well as* grant aid and work-study (both of which are need-based). Unfortunately, it is explicitly stated in the Federal Student Aid regulations that a parent's refusal to pay for his/her/their child's education is not sufficient grounds for a student's dependency status to be overriden (sadly, if this was the case, then parents would start making these claims just to get their kids more money): http://www.ifap.ed.gov/sfahandbooks/attachments/0607AVGCh5.pdf Instead, if you can prove to your Financial Aid administrator that you are completely self-supporting (because you have no other choice), they should be able to grant you what is referred to as a "dependency override." Because these overrides cannot be granted without due cause, your school must be careful, so you will probably be asked to submit documentation that you have been paying all of your own expenses (food, housing, clothing, insurance, transportation) and are not claimed on someone else's tax return. If you can't submit this information now, you might want to consider delaying your enrollment for a little while until you meet the FAFSA's standard "Independency" criteria (i.e. you are 24, married, have dependents, are on active duty, or are a veteran/ward/orphan, etc.) or until you qualify for a dependency override. If you must attend school now, your options are limited: you can seek instutitional funding from the school you plan on attending, you can apply for private scholarship funding... or you can borrow private loans. There are certainly students who manage to fund their educations exclusively with private loan funding... but I suspect that many of these students regret that choice. Alternatively, you might opt to borrow private loans but attend a much lower-cost institution (such as a community college or state school) so that your overall debt doesn't exceed your ability to repay. For a list of private loan options, try this site: http://www.finaid.org/loans/privatestudentloans.phtml

You have to qualify for work-study, just like for grants. What you need to do is contact your local Fin Aid Office and file supplemental forms - these can augment your FAFSA. You cannot file as independent unless you are married, 24 or older, or already have a degree.