I am a freshman at Nassau Community College. Currently, I’m a Liberal Arts Major, but I’m thinking of switching into the Nursing program. My parents and I pay for school out-of-pocket. I work a lot to help pay for my part. Usually, I work about 25 hours a week, doing five hour shifts five days a week. I used to work less, but I’ve had to increase my hours because of tuition. Now it’s harder to make time for my schoolwork.

As a DACA student, I can’t get any federal aid. I had to look for other scholarships, but it’s been hard because I’m the first person in my family to go to college, so no one could really help me at home. What made things more difficult was that I was almost charged out-of-state tuition. NCC said that since I was not a resident, I did not qualify for in-state tuition. I had to jump through a lot of hoops and send them a lot of extra documents to finally get in-state tuition.