I can’t tell you how exactly hard it is going to be for you to be accepted. I would think if you got your desired 3.0 gpa, you wouldn’t have a problem getting into a state school.
There are need based scholarships. However, I don’t think they just hand them out to anybody and everybody who has need. I mean, there’s only so much money available, it makes sense for schools to hand out need based scholarships to those who have need and AND have a track record of academic success or show potential (basically, high GPA and ACT/SAT scores).
With your gpa, unless you just completely dominate the ACT/SAT, I don’t know how much schools will be willing to hand out to you money wise. For my school, you needed at least a 32 out of 36 on the ACT to get a full tuition scholarship,. If you got a 31, you really didn’t get much in terms of scholarships (read: maybe 2000 dollars). It’s kind of BS there is such a huge difference in scholarship money for 1 point, but that’s how it worked here at least.
You may be eligible for grants. I had 2 siblings and a single parent who didn’t make much money, and I got $7500 in grants my first year of college, it decreased each year because the state I live in kept cutting funding.
There’s also Work-Study for a lot of colleges I think. Basically, you work 10-20 hours a week for the University (library desk clerk, rec clerk, something incredibly easy basically) and they pay you a set amount I believe. Most of my friends who did this got put into jobs that they had so much down time they could do homework or study while at work.
If I wouldn’t have gotten a bunch of scholarships/grants, I would not have been able to afford college without a ton of loans. If that would have happened, I would have went to a community college first and did the prereq’s then moved onto a 4 year. MOST general education courses are so ridiculously easy, even at a 4 year college, that it’s a waste of money to pay a 4 year college to take them. Seriously, there were classes I either didn’t show up to or did other homework during them and just showed up on test day and got an A for the course. Would be a complete waste of $1000+ dollars for tuition. Classes like these you can easily get done at a community college for much, much less and not hurt your quality of education.
You may want a 4 year college. And you can definitely start there if you want, but honestly if you aren’t going to get scholarships and your dad isn’t going to be footing the bill, start at a community college, work a part time job, and live at home if that is an option. Living at home will save you easily over $7000 a year, and thats in my state where the cost of living is lower then Texas. After 2 years of that then go onto a 4 year, pick a major you want, and take out loans if need be. Paying off $40,000 in loans for 2 years is way easier then paying off over $100 thousand for the 4-5 years.
And get a part time job NOW if you don’t already have one, and work a part time job the WHOLE time your in college. You can do it, most people I know work part time in college. I mostly work 2 eight hour shifts on weekends, and thats it. It won’t pay all of your bills, but if you can make even $6,000 a year it helps to reduce your debt.