Hey Iscook, I'm in my second year at Johnson and wales and i happen to do most of my financial aid my self. so couple things you want to do first get your fafsa filled out this is your federal aid heres the link http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/#. you can probably get about 4,000 dollars from this and its a federal loan so it has a very low interest rate. after you fill that out J&W will recieve an invoice about your aid and should provide you with a grant and that is give free of charge and dosen't have to be paid off i got about 10,000 as a grant but it varies for each student the sooner you fill out the fafsa the more you can get. now this will cover about half the cost of J&W if you can start applying for scholarships no matter what it's for or how much just try and get a couple because it helps in the long run http://www.fastweb.com/ this site right here list a lot of scholarships and where to submit them it's like a huge search engine of them. last and finally how you can get the rest of the money is a private student loan. now this is were you really have to consider your financial situation. there are a lot of diffrent student loans out there with a lot of different payment plans and options. if you have the money too paying off your loan while in college is great for your financial future if you can afford it those payments can be really high and hard to fund if your going full time. you can also pay off the interest each month but that to can be pretty expensive. i have about 15,000 in loans and pay about 100 a month and that's just interest. and some offer student deferment so you dont have to pay anything while in college which is great for you now but you will be paying for it later. https://www.salliemae.com/ this is where i got my loan and they approve a lot of there loans but you might need a co signer with alright credit. so yeah with all that you should be able to afford college. you can even take out extra on your loan to pay for housing if you are not dorming or for school supplies. so hope that answers some questions if you want post under any questions and i hopefully can answer them also my e-mail address is pjm855@students.jwu.edu so e-mail me if you have a question also just curious what campus are you attending I'm at the Providence hope this helped.