Category: Student Stories

“When we first moved to Cheyenne, we had to live in a homeless shelter. We’d been homeless before that too,” explains Karina.

“My mom has had a very hard life. Sometimes she would work until 5:00 in the morning at the beef plant. Her last husband was abusive and would cheat on her.”

“I started to do drugs. I was around 11 years old. By the time he left, I was 13 and addicted to methamphetamine. It was really bad.”

Karina remembers that, through all of it, her mom never gave up on her. “I would leave for days. My mom always looked for me. She would stay awake and see if I would come home. When I did, she helped me come down. Then, I’d leave again.”

“I even went to jail. It was horrible.”

Eventually, Karina’s mom was able to persuade her to go into rehab. “I don’t even remember the first two months because I was so strung out. But I’ve been sober for three years now.”

Determined not to give up

Karina’s mom never gave up on her, and she didn’t want to give up on herself either.

“I don’t even know how much class I missed. I didn’t know where to put a comma in a sentence or how to study. There was one point senior year where I had three Fs. I was still missing class because I didn’t have gas money to get to school, or I was too tired after work to do my homework.”

“But I knew I was smart and I knew I had to keep trying. I asked my teachers for help and was able to turn those three Fs into two Cs and a B.”

Karina’s counselor, Ms. Sackrider, hadn’t given up on her either. “She told me I had to go to college. She half-jokingly said, ‘I will hunt you down and you will go to college.’ And she did. She called me out of class to her office and told me about the FAFSA and the money I could get.”

Getting money for college

Karina remembers walking into Ms. Sackrider’s office. “I was super nervous. But she was so nice and answered all my questions. I felt like she was actually helping me.”

“I thought, ‘Karina, you know if you walk in that office it could change your life forever. And you will never know unless you try.”

“She took me step by step through the FAFSA and we filled it out together. Early on, one of the questions was whether I’d ever been homeless. I clicked ‘yes.’ Then she said I didn’t have to fill out anything about my parents because of that. There were fewer questions. It only took us a few minutes.”

“Where I come from, a lot of kids don’t go to college. It is rare that they graduate high school,” Camryn explains. “I thought I’d join the Marines or the Army.”

College wasn’t on Camryn’s mind, until his track coach sophomore year got him thinking.

“He asked me, ‘Are you going to run in college?’ He put that idea in my head. I started thinking more and more that maybe I could go to college.”

“By junior year, I was like, I’m going to college. I don’t want to do anything else. I want to be the first of my mom’s kids to graduate college.”

Camryn knew college wasn’t going to be easy. “My older sister went to college, but she dropped out after the first semester,” Camryn says.

“I think it was too hard. But she ran away when things got tough. That’s not going to be me. For me, when things get tough, I use that as motivation. God put me here for a reason. Just because something bad happens doesn’t mean that something good isn’t coming my way.”

“I don’t want to end up being a statistic,” he adds.

Thinking beyond athletic scholarships

Camryn knew he’d need help paying for college. He ran track and played football, so he thought maybe he could get an athletic scholarship.

“Then, somebody from College Now came to my class to talk about FAFSA. I was thinking, do I really need to fill this out? I remember they said, ‘What if you don’t get a full scholarship? Where will you be then?’”

“They had a good point,” Camryn says. “I only have one parent, so I thought my odds of getting some money from the government are good. Why not fill it out to see what I can get?”

Camryn decided to talk to his mom about it first. “I told her I needed her income information to fill out the FAFSA.”

“I said to her, ‘What if I don’t get an athletic scholarship? I don’t want you to take out thousands of dollars of loans to help me go to school when we can get free money from the government.’”

“She told me she’d get me the information I needed. She even said, ‘Fill it out ASAP so we can be ahead of the game.’ The FAFSA came out October 1 and we were ready by October 2.”

More support than he’d imagined

“I went into my College Now advisor’s office at my school and we filled out the FAFSA together. She explained where all the information went in the form.”

“Once we sat down, we didn’t stop except for a couple times. There was some more stuff we needed and we called my mom. She was at work, so we had to wait five or 10 minutes for her to call us back. In all, it took us maybe an hour and a half.”

“I was thinking, do I really need to fill the FAFSA out? They said, ‘What if you don’t get a full scholarship? Where will you be then?”

Camryn found out later that he’d received a Pell Grant. “I got about $3,500. Then, my college looked at my FAFSA and said my tuition would only be $4,000 a year. Normally tuition there is $50,000, so to only have to pay four is big.”

College Now helped Camryn figure out how to close the gap. “They helped me fill out applications for outside scholarships, and I got them. Now I don’t have to pay anything throughout college.”

“I feel like College Now really cares about kids. They didn’t have to help me apply for scholarships. They did not have to help me fill out my FAFSA as fast as we did, but they were true to their word.”

“They were there for me whenever I needed someone,” he adds. “They looked over my application essays, correcting things that needed to be corrected. When my grandma passed and I wasn’t myself, they noticed and helped me cope. It was a blessing, honestly.”

Camryn’s advice: See what you can get

“I know some kids who have two parents in the household and make a lot of money, but they still filled out the FAFSA to see what they can get. Sometimes it’s just a test to see if they can get some money.”

Camryn adds, “I believe kids should do it just to see. You’ll never know if you don’t apply for it. It’s free money. Everybody loves free money.”

“I also learned that it is okay to ask for help. You don’t have to do everything on your own. Turn to somebody for help. That’s what they’re there for.”

Camryn will be attending the College of Wooster and studying psychology. He has a spot on the football team and hopes to walk onto the track team. He plans to one day be an investigator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“I like school. The only thing I hate is having to get up so early,” Tyshae says with a laugh.

“I’m the salutatorian, which is the person after the valedictorian. I have to give a speech at graduation,” explains Tyshae. “I’m a little nervous, but I just have to stay calm. It’s just my friends and family. I was always a shy kid, so my confidence had to build up.”

Even though Tyshae was shy growing up, she always believed in herself.

“I never doubted that I’d go to college. I just always believed I could do it. Lots of people in my family didn’t go to college, but they really want me to have a good life and make good money.”

She has been preparing for college by taking college-level classes, too. “My counselor told me about the program and at first I thought it would be too much. But I’m glad I did it. Even though it can be pretty hectic, I’ve built up 34 credit hours. I’m pretty happy about that.”

Getting help from her college advisor
“My college advisor introduced the FAFSA to us, maybe at the end of 11th grade or the beginning of 12th,” Tyshae recalls.

“I didn’t really know what it was — whether it would be on paper or on the computer,” she says. But her college advisor was able to answer her questions. “My advisor was very encouraging, and he was looking out for me. He was always willing to help because he really wanted us to do the FAFSA.”

Filling out the FAFSA was easy, Tyshae says. “Some parts I did myself. One part I asked my mom for help. I have a free period at school, so I was able to go to my college advisor for help, too.”

But there were a few things that were hard: getting her mom’s FSA ID and getting selected for verification.

Figuring out the FSA ID and verification
“My older sister filled out the FAFSA when she graduated in 2013, so my mom already had an FSA ID. But she couldn’t remember it,” Tyshae explains.

“I am very thankful for my college advisor. I don’t know what I would have done without him.”

“She couldn’t remember the answers to the secret questions or anything. It was like, we can’t break into this, so what are we going to do?”

“We got something either in the mail or by email that we could fill out to verify her identity. Then we were able to go ahead and finish the FAFSA.”

Then, Tyshae found out she was selected for verification. That means she had to provide additional proof of her mom’s income.

“It was pretty tough. There was a lot of waiting for things to get sent to us and then send to my school, stuff like that,” she says. She had to wait for documents from the IRS so she could send them to her college’s financial aid office.

But her determination paid off. “I got a Pell Grant, grants from the state of Ohio, loans and a scholarship. I’m getting around $30,000 in financial aid.”

“I was like, ‘Wow, that’s great!’ I just really hoped I would get it. I am very thankful for my college advisor. I don’t know what I would have done without him.”

Tyshae’s advice: You never know what can happen

“Go to your college advisor or whoever can help you with filling out your FAFSA. Make an appointment and ask questions about the FAFSA so you will already be prepared,” says Tyshae.

She thinks every student should fill out the FAFSA. “Go for it. You never know what could happen,” she adds.

“And apply to as many scholarships as you can. You never know if you are going to get that money or not. At least you’ll have tried and then you might not have to take out any loans at all.”

Tyshae will be attending Youngstown State University and plans to major in business administration. She hopes to own a business one day.

“On my first day of school in the United States, the teacher gave us all an assignment,” Rashid recalls. “In Kenya, you don’t call teachers by their last name — you call them ‘teacher.’ So when I needed help I raised my hand and said, ‘Teacher, teacher.’”

“People started laughing at me,” he says.

School was a difficult adjustment for Rashid, who came to the U.S. halfway through high school.

“My accent was different. It was hard for me to adapt. But six months later, I joined the school’s soccer team. I’ve been playing soccer since I was 8 years old. I started adapting to the culture and making friends.”

It was tragedy that spurred his family to migrate. “My father died in the civil war in Kenya. My mom, three younger brothers and sisters and I came to the United States so we could get a better education.”

“I’m facing a lot of challenges,” explains Rashid. It’s a struggle for his mom, who works at a local warehouse, to work while taking care of him and his siblings. “I need to try my best to make money to help my family and pay my bills.”

Figuring out how college and financial aid works in the U.S.

It was difficult to figure out how college works, especially in a new country. “I will be the first in my family to attend college,” says Rashid.

“In my senior year, I hadn’t filled out any college applications. I didn’t do my FAFSA. All the students were talking about that stuff, but I didn’t know about it.”

“One day, all the seniors were called into the auditorium and I met a lady named Ms. Clemens from I Know I Can. I said, ‘Hey, Ms. Clemens, what is FAFSA?’ She told me to come to her office at the school, so I did.”

“I asked, ‘How does FAFSA help? What does it do?’ Another question I had was if the money from it was free or if I had to pay it back. She told me that some of the money was free, so I was a little bit excited. Because I come from a low-income family, I can’t pay for college by myself.”

Ms. Clemens gave Rashid a list of things he needed to gather to fill out the FAFSA, which included his mom’s income.

Getting the information he needed from his mom

When Rashid asked his mom for her income information, she had questions of her own.

“I had to include my mom’s income when she worked at a salon in Kenya. They helped me convert it to U.S. dollars for the FAFSA.”

“She asked me, ‘Why do you need it? What is it for?’ I started explaining that the FAFSA will help me pay for college since we can’t pay the college money. Then, she told me it was okay.”

But it wasn’t that simple. “I also had to include her former income, but that was when she worked at a salon in Kenya. Ms. Clemens helped me convert it to U.S. dollars so I could put the number in the FAFSA.”

Rashid started filling out the FAFSA himself, but found he needed help. “It was confusing. I asked Ms. Clemens to help me. We finished everything together. Other people were finishing the FAFSA in one day, but it took me two days to finish.”

Looking back, Rashid says it was worth it. “In the middle of the form, I was thinking, this is taking too long. But then I was thinking, who is going to pay for college? That got me to keep going.”

Rashid’s advice: Stay positive

“I just want to say one thing: have a positive mind. Fill out the FAFSA. There is nothing to be afraid of. It is free money you are getting.”

“Even if it doesn’t cover everything, it might cover some of the cost. It depends on your income and your parent’s income, too,” adds Rashid.

“This is for the students who don’t have money to pay for college. It helps them get a chance to go to college and succeed in life. I think everyone can achieve their goals and dreams if you stick to it and do what is right.”

Rashid will be attending Columbus State University and plans to study medical engineering or another medical field. “I’m good at science and math,” he says. He hopes to play soccer in college, too.

“I really like working. I work at a sandwich shop. It’s kind of like Subway, but not a chain. Every morning, I get up and go slice all the vegetables and meat, then go to school. I come back after school and work more,” says Katie.

Besides the fact that she likes it, Katie works because she doesn’t get financial support from her parents. “When I was 16, I went through the court system and ended up being placed in one of my sister’s custody,” she recalls.

“Working makes me feel good because I’m supporting myself.”

But Katie started stressing out about her plans after high school. “My sister, who I live with, is going to move after I graduate. I’m going to be completely on my own.”

How her sandwich shop coworkers inspired her

Katie wasn’t sure she could afford college — or if college was even a good idea. “My sisters told me you don’t always have to go to college to be successful.”

“The sister I live with went to college for six years. It was a struggle and she never got her degree. She has her dream job at a big company, but she has six years of student loan debt. My other sister went to college for one semester and dropped out. She makes good money as a photographer.”

It was her sandwich shop coworkers that cemented her decision to go to college.

“I was talking to them about trying to decide what to do next. One coworker said, ‘It is good for your sisters that they didn’t get a college degree and are doing well, but it’s not always easy. You get to a point where everyone else has a degree and you can’t compete.’ He told me he would get a degree if he could do it all over again.”

“I have coworkers in their 40s. Working at the sandwich shop is not a bad job, but it’s not what I want to be doing in my 40s or 50s. I realized not going to college would really limit my options.”

Once Katie decided she wanted to go to college, she had to figure out how to pay for it.

Getting help with the FAFSA

“I went to a FAFSA workshop at my school. A woman named Judy Kee Smith from the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission came and explained the FAFSA to us. I remember her name because she gave me her business card and I’ve kept it.”

“The sandwich shop is not a bad job, but it’s not what I want to be doing in my 40s.”

“She was so nice. She helped me fill out the FAFSA. If I didn’t understand a question, she phrased it a way that wasn’t hard to understand. We did it after school on a school computer.”

Because Katie was in her sister’s custody, she didn’t have to fill in her parent’s income information. “The FAFSA automatically put my family’s Estimated Financial Contribution as zero. I just had to put in my own information, like my Social Security number.”

“I found out I could go to college practically for free. I was so excited. It’s about $20,000 a year and $17,000 is covered. I’m going to have to take out maybe a $3,000 loan. My sisters have both said they support my decision.”

Katie’s advice: Don’t assume

“I had a lot of classmates say they weren’t going to fill out the FAFSA because they thought they wouldn’t qualify for anything. Fill it out anyway. It might be a little stressful, but it is not nearly as bad as people make it out to be.”

“In my situation, I didn’t even think I was going to be able to pay for college at all. I’m on my own so I was going to pay out of pocket no matter what I chose to do, but, because I filled out the FAFSA, I got these grants and scholarships.”

“I’m even going to a bigger college than I thought. I had just assumed it was too expensive for me.”

“I am thankful I decided to dig deeper into financial aid and fill out the FAFSA, and for the woman who helped me. Without her, I don’t think I’d be going to college.”

Katie will be attending West Virginia University and hasn’t declared a major. Because she learned Spanish in high school, she hopes to study abroad in Costa Rica.

“Back in 2010, my father passed away from a stroke. Around the same time, my mother was diagnosed with stage four melanoma, but she survived,” says Zachary.

“It was devastating. Being such a young kid, all of this hitting at once. I started working at age 16 to help pay the bills and help the family out. I have a lot of stress in my life.”

Zachary works two jobs while in school. “I work at an event center where I help clean and I’m a dietary aide at a nursing home. I help make sure our residents get correct meals based on their diets.”

“I want financial stability, which I don’t have now,” he explains. “I believe if I expand my knowledge and get a better education, I can better my life, make more money and meet new people.”

Daring for a different future

Zachary never thought college was a possibility. “I thought I wouldn’t go to college because I can’t afford it. I always thought I’d make minimum wage. No one else in my family went to college.”

“Every Friday, someone from the Educational Talent Search came to my school. Her name was June. She talked about how college was a good thing. That price does turn it down a little, but you can find your way through it if you really try.”

Zachary decided to talk to June and his guidance counselor. “They talked to me about the FAFSA and how to pay for college. I learned about the Pell Grant and loans I could take out.”

“I really couldn’t afford college. So I thought, why not give this a shot and see what happens?”

Filling out the FAFSA, despite some bumps in the road

“It was kind of easy, but then it got difficult,” Zachary explains.

“I had to give information about where I worked, how much money I made and how much money my mom makes. With a mom who works two jobs, is always busy, and is always hurting from the cancer surgery she got, it was hard to get her to help.”

Zachary remembers saying, “Mom, I really want to go to college. Could you just help me?” He explained that the FAFSA was an investment in his future. “She said, ‘Yes, of course.’”

His mom didn’t have an email address for creating an online account, so he created one for her. “She’s not good with computers,” he says. And then Zachary got locked out of his own online account himself.

“I always thought I’d make minimum wage. No one else in my family went to college.”

The four to five hours of work paid off, Zachary says. “When I finished and found out how much aid I was getting, I didn’t understand what it was and had to ask somebody to explain it. When I found out, I was ecstatic.”

“The college I’m going to gave me what’s called the Granite Guarantee, which means my tuition is 100 percent covered. I just have to pay for books, room and board. I have a $5,600 Pell Grant too after filling out the FAFSA and I’m eligible for a $5,500 loan with low interest rates.”

“I’m also applying for scholarships. I want to be an R.A., or resident assistant, in the dorms my sophomore year to get free room and board.”

He also got connected with a group called My Turn. “They had extra money and got me a laptop to bring to college. It’s really nice. They’re also giving me hookups for scholarships and helping me find another job during the summer before I leave.”

Zachary’s advice: Don’t make excuses

Zachary believes other students who want to go to college should push past their doubts and ask for help. “Life is full of excuses. Nine out of 10 of them are going to be invalid. Just do it.”

“Go to teachers, your guidance counselors, or even local people who come in who do different programs. Research the different programs around because there is plenty of help out there.”

He wants to help others too one day. “I want to give back someday. Maybe offer scholarships for high school kids. I want to say I started from the bottom — that I worked my way up and can give back to the community that helped me.”

Zachary will be attending the University of New Hampshire and studying civil technology. He hopes to have a career in architecture.