I was wondering if you had any ideas on a situation. My boyfriend is 21 and trying to go to college for the first time. He got accepted to a really good art school and worked to get a scholarship. However, he only got $12,000 for four years. Because of his age his fafsa still goes off his parents income, expecting them to help him. His mom only makes $13,000 a year, but she's re-married and her husband makes about $75,000 a year and he's not helping to pay for the school. Furthermore, my boyfriend's older brother had their parents as a cosigner on loans totaling about $70,000 that he's defaulted on, so even if they wanted to they're tied up with that. My boyfriend only makes $8.75 an hour and is finding this a little impossible. The school's tuition alone is about $6000 a semester and we're struggling trying to find a way to pay for school. He's really talented in graphic design, which is what he wants to go to school for, and has already worked a lot on his own teaching himself from resources online, but he is really striving to go to school and get his degree. Do you have any suggestions as to how we could handle this situation? It really seems like he's just falling through the cracks and it's really stressful and frustrating, and I'm trying to help but I don't know what to do.

Has he talked about all this with the school's financial aid officer?

We tried the person was really unprofessional and wouldn't make an appointment, they said "you just need to fill out that fafsa" even though we explained the situation to them, they really didn't listen to us.

Now that we've filled out the fafsa and gotten his EFC ($11,000) we're going to make an appointment. Based on how unprofessional their office was before I don't have high hopes for the meeting.

We tried the person was really unprofessional and wouldn't make an appointment, they said "you just need to fill out that fafsa" even though we explained the situation to them, they really didn't listen to us.

Now that we've filled out the fafsa and gotten his EFC ($11,000) we're going to make an appointment. Based on how unprofessional their office was before I don't have high hopes for the meeting.
Ask for the head of the department. Talk with the school's dean. And you do need to fill out the FAFSA and send it in (which you did).

What do you think they would say?

What do you think they would say?
There may be grants and local scholarships that you don't know about. The f.a. officer will know about these. My son learned about all sorts of opportunities when he talked to the head of that office. There are work-study programs too.