You may look for a student credit card, sometimes they charge no interests for 6 to 12 months !

… and never forget you’ll have to pay back these loans PLUS the interests…

Good luck !

What you might want to do is use the loan for a wise investment too, like buying your own home.

Frankly, I wouldn’t lend money to a community college student because their odds of finishing a four-year degree are so low.

This is the dirty little secret in all those articles about saving money by attending one. The problem is not faculty or even curriculum. The teaching can be excellent and the appreciation of the problems of non-traditional and/or economically stressed students is large. The cause is unclear, but probably has to do with the other students. Many of them are first-generation college students and just don’t know how to study or organize themselves for college. Others are there because their parents want to keep them insured, even though they’re not college material. (Yes, people do this; my cousins did for their son with Asberger’s.) Many students are there because they aren’t sure what they want to or can do.

Most students aren’t strong enough academically or personally to persevere when the majority of their fellow students are poorly prepared and/or poorly motivated. Most of us need others who have firm goals and decent organizational skills to keep us going in those moments when we’d just as soon drop out, or complain about a teacher instead of buckling down to study or blow off a reading assignment or class.

A college loan is a worthwhile cost to get a degree that allows you to make more money or work in better circumstances than otherwise. Try to borrow enough so you don’t have to work while you’re in school–save jobs for summer or Christmas break. Students who don’t work or work only on campus are more likely to graduate than those who work off campus–partly because they can take and do well in a full load and finish more or less on time. BTW, after four years, the longer you’re in school, the less likely you are to ever graduate so you want to spend as little time as possible there–not string out school and working part-time. You forget the prerequisite course information and every new course is harder (and takes more hours per week) than it should.

Take about 18 hours, 6 regular courses or 5 with some labs’ that’s what it’ll take to get you out in 8 semesters–4 years. Don’t count on going to summer school especially after the first summer because courses are less and less likely to “make”–to have enough students to conduct them–the more specific they become. (Lots of freshman algebra, even calculus–not Differential Equations or History of the Palestinian Conflict.) Between the courses and the amount you should spend studying for them will take 54 hours a week. You do not have time to work off campus.