If you demonstrate financial need on your application (don’t worry, they’ll determine if you qualify), you may apply for a Stafford Loan (about $5000 per semester) and you may also qualify for a Pell grant (about $5000 per year).

Once you are accepted to your chose university, you must immediately contact the financial aid department, and make sure that they have received a copy of your report. At the beginning of the semester, you will receive notification from that department telling you how much actual aid you qualify for. Pay attention, because you may have to accept your aid, and if you don’t it will expire. If you have good academic records, or an artistic or athletic skill, you may qualify for scholarships to play or perform for the university. The school’s financial aid department will work with you.

After you have applied for all federal aid available, apply for every private scholarship you can find. Try websites like Fastweb.com for listings of public scholarships. Be aware that every person in the country can apply for these, so you have a great deal of competition.

Within the last 6 weeks before the beginning of the semester, you should apply for loans to cover the remaining funds you need to pay for school. Continue to apply for scholarships. If you get enough, you can reject the loans. but as it takes quite some time to process loans and distribute money to your school, you should do this sooner rather than later.

After living in Florida for 2 years, you qualify for statehood. There are some limited exceptions to shorten this time, and you should talk to your adviser to see if you can expedite your residency. After that, you qualify for all Florida resident scholarships, and you will be able to pay instate tuition fees.
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For scholarships, please ask your school, or get your own through here:

http://www.tracemediums.com/front%20page/Consulting/site/partners.html
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Otherwise, I’m actually surprised they deferred you, but as we all know, there’s some "luck of the draw" in all of this. I presume you don’t have "skeletons" in your closet from high school (e.g. cheating, suspensions, major attitude issues that might come through on letters of recommendation…?)

It’s my understanding that relatively few people who are deferred are accepted during regular admission (read this in a book written by a Dartmouth grad who worked as an assistant dean of admissions there for 4 years…) so I am concerned about your chances.

On paper, it should be a 9. In reality, my guess is it’s more a 4.

I hope I’m wrong on the latter and that you get in. If you do, make the most of it! If you don’t, no doubt there’s another school that will be lucky to have you if you indeed are everything your qualifications suggest.
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There might also be private scholarships for single parents. Try http://www.fastweb.com to see what you can find.

Good luck!
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Used to work in a Financial Aid Office

If you have a general idea of what colleges you are interested in, you can also check on their financial aid offices’ web sites for scholarships they provide for incoming freshmen. You will find that the great majority of scholarships come from the colleges themselves, not from the private programs. Unfortunately, in most cases you will have no idea how much aid a particular college would offer until you can actually apply and be admitted there. For you, that’s 3 years into the future.

Good luck!
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