As shady as it sounds there are ways to make yourself look poor on paper so you can get a ton of financial aid. The FAFSA form is obviously based upon your taxable earnings from the previous year. There are legal deductions you can make to reduce your taxable income and get more financial aid. One of them being investment property. The interest and expenses are tax deductable. Now you may be saying "I can' afford investment property and if I could I wouldn't need the financial aid." Wrong, you can afford it. There are plenty of private lenders out there that will loan money out specifically for this kind of thing, you just have to know where to look. Anything you can do to reduce your taxable income on your return will help you get more financial aid. Another way to get some cash to just pay for school is flipping houses. My dad and I started fixing and flipping houses last year. The key is to buy something for about 70 cents on the dollar and spend up to $15K to get it in turn key condition and get out from under it by selling for about 95 cents on the dollar. If you keep rolling the money into a new project you won't pay taxes on it either. When you get enough to pay for school pull the money out, put away what you need to for the taxes and use the rest for school. Great thing is you can do it in your spare time even once you get that airline job, if that is your goal. Not too hard to do and not that time consuming, you just have to know where to look and who to talk to. Everything in this world is all about networking.