Four Common In-State Residency Bumps and Loopholes

By: The College Essay Guy

1. If your parents are separated and live and pay taxes in different states, then you might qualify for in-state tuition in both of those states.
2. Your parents owning a vacation home or you having a relative who lives in the college’s state does not qualify you for in-state tuition.
3. Your moving to a state after graduating high school in order to attend a college in that state rarely qualifies you as an in-state resident right away.
   • Most states have a minimum requirement of 12 months of continuous residency (Alaska asks for 24 months and Arkansas requires only 6) prior to enrolling at a college in order to qualify for in-state tuition. This means that, unless you can prove that you—the student—are financially independent of your parents, your parents usually have to live in that state for a full year before you are eligible for in-state tuition.
   • Some colleges allow you to ask for a change in residency status from out-of-state to in-state partway through your college years; some don’t, and the residency status you have when you start is the one you keep.
4. If you or your parents are not US citizens or legal residents of your state, qualifying as an in-state resident and/or being eligible for state aid programs can become trickier to determine, as the rules vary drastically by state.
   • Best case scenario: You qualify for in-state tuition and state financial aid programs
   • Good scenario: You qualify for in-state tuition, but not state aid
   • Not great scenario: You don’t qualify for in-state tuition or state aid
   • Worst case scenario: Your state actually prohibits any public college from allowing you to enroll, i.e. you can’t attend even if you were willing and able to pay out-of-state tuition.

If this residency issue applies to you, here are some resources to help you determine if a public university in the state you live in is actually going to be financially feasible.

• US Map of Color-coded by Policy
• Comprehensive Summary of State Policies

Want more information about residency policies? Here’s a helpful article to get you started. Here’s an even more helpful article with lots of lists, if you really want to dig into this.