iLolo25

Yeah I know that stress all too well. Lol. I had just turned 23 in December and I did my FAFSA in April. Yeah when I answered my questions at one point they were like, hey you can claim yourself as independent this year based on your responses, so I went that route because my parents were taking a while to do their taxes and I was starting school soon.

I was in the same situation too. I graduated last year with my bachelor's and came out with about 26,000 in loans. The school I'm going to now is pricey so I knew I would have to take out loans to cover the tuition. When I filled out my FAFSA this year I realized that I could claim myself as an independent since I'm 23, even though my parents claimed me on their taxes this year. So when I talked to my financial advisor I was pleasantly surprised to find out that since I claimed myself as an independent on FAFSA I had way more money left for my federal loans (close to another 30K I think). I think if I had claimed myself as a dependent I would have only had about 2-3,000 if that. Unfortunately I did have to take out a private loan because of my tuition. But that was my experience with that.

I got my call yesterday afternoon. :) I also happened to be really sick at the time with a nasty cold (still am). My advisor called me and I was excited but I don't think I've hit that full potential of excitement yet (I'm going to give it a couple more days). So as of now, no celebrations, but once I get over this cold, I'll probably reward myself with a beach day and drinks with some friends. Okay as I was typing this out, it did start to hit me a little bit. =D