There are also need-based aid programs. You can get this money if your parents really cannot afford to pay your college costs, but not if they have money and don’t want to spend it.

If your parents genuinely refuse to support you, you might be able to declare yourself an independent, which means that they cannot take you as an income tax deduction, and cannot be supporting you at all. Then it would be much easier to get financial aid.

There are also other options, like ROTC, if you don’t mind a military obligation afterwards. There are a few other government branches, like the NSA that run similar programs (although for the NSA, you need excellent math and/or computer programming skills).

http://www.thebigwww.com/scholarship.html