Flyboy10029

Hey All,

I have wanted to fly for all of my life and I am a freshman in college at Ole Miss. My Air Force idea didn't end up working out and I still want to pursue my dream of being a pilot. However, by transferring schools, it will end up costing me about $34000 more than what my parents are paying for school.I am considering transferring from Ole Miss to Auburn for Professional Flight Management as a degree, just for the record. Does anybody have any ideas on how to make some money to pay for this extra money? I have about 3 years to make this money by the time I graduate. I have a summer job with my dad that ends up paying about $2000 a summer, so I need to fill in the difference. Do you know if most schools have work study programs or solid scholarships that I can know if I will get ahead of time? I would like to know ahead of time so that I don't get to school and find out that I'm SOL. Any ideas? I would preferably not want to use student loans if at all possible.Thanks everyone! Any advice would be very helpful!

CaptainCarl

Stay at Ole Miss. Major in something not aviation related. Enjoy your college years. Learn to fly at an FBO with an instructor who isn't looking to just build time. Preferably one with gray hair. Go fly gliders for a couple of weekends, you will learn valuable lessons that a powered airplane can never teach you. Good luck.

LongFlight

I'm at Auburn now majoring in pro flight and I am in the same boat you are in. I've exhausted all of my student loan options and even tried taking out a personal loan at a bank. I will tell you that it costs about $2,000 per month. Most of the jobs around here are fast food and pay minimum wage. I had to drop out of my flight training last week until I can reapply for financial aid in January. From what I am finding out, if you're not extremely poor to where you can get gov. assistance or if you're not extremely rich to where you can pay $60,000 out of pocket, then you're kind of screwed. You either work full-time and save every penny or you work part time and fly once a month.

The way it works here is if you decide to just do flight training and not go to school here, you put $3,000 into an account and you have to have a min of $750 to fly. If you can't get the full amount you are entitled to for student loans plus a pell grant, you will be in the same boat with me very frustrated and realizing you have to put it off another year. Take some advice and get your degree and get your flight time somewhere else. I'm going to finish mine at KBHM flight center. It's about $17,000 cheaper and it takes around 10 months instead of 3 years to go from zero time to commercial. I don't have pm's yet and neither do you so if you want some more info on the program then shoot me an e-mail at [email protected]