Need a College Degree - To Figure Out How to Go to College

Trying to get into college is a daunting task and I'm not talking about the educational standards. It costs approximately $10,000 per year to go to even a community college. This includes classes, books, travel (car insurance & gas) and sundry other expenses. Trying to go to a university is even more expensive.

There are so many sites out there with scholarship advice, grant advice and student loan advice that trying to sort everything out is be confusing. It does not help that when figuring out if you qualify for student aid, they don't take into account debts as well as income.

Theoretically, I suppose, one could have one parent that makes $75,000 per year while the other parent is ill with something insurance won't cover and has several hundred thousand dollars worth of medical expenses to be paid. This family could be living in a tiny house and spending most of their income towards medical expenses, but when it comes time to calculate if the student can get financial aid... Oops. Their parents make too much money to get any sort of government grant.

Of course, there are student loans, but that's just even more debt to be added to their load. It's a good option, but still not something that should be undertaken lightly.

And then there are scholarships. These are wonderful ways of making money for your schooling, save a couple things: some scholarships limit the amount of money you can receive. A scholarship might be for $5,000, but if you get any other scholarships then they take money away so you only get $5,000 total.

Not to mention that there is the matter of academic merit. This can be a good way to judge whether a student is worthy to get the money they need to go to college and, on the face of it, it seems like a great idea. The only problem I have with most scholarships is they don't specify what to do if you never went to high school.

I do not mean if the prospective student dropped out, though that is a good question too, I'm talking about homeschooled students. More and more parents are homeschooling their kids. Homeschooled kids are not dumb, but these scholarships generally don't make a mention of what to do in that case; most of them are worded such to make it seem that you would have to take at least one year of college first before applying for the scholarship. This is an costly proposition for most people.

One could always work their way through college, but with college getting more expensive this is almost impossible. Trying to juggle work and school at the same time is too much for many people and they drop out.

Faced with all these obstacles, I tend to be amazed at the sheer volume of students who are able to attend college or university; especially the more expensive institutions.