Verified answer

You may not get all of it paid for, but with an EFC of $0 you'll get quite a bit. My fiance had the same EFC and got about $12,000 which completely pays for his stuff, but where we go is only about $9500/year. It just depends on what the financial aid office thinks you will need. Sounds like you have a good chance of getting most of it paid for though.

I'm not sure that they'll cover 100% of the costs, but with an EFC of 0 they should be offering you quite a bit (the government and the schools are all very poor right now)! Perhaps your school will offer you financial aid in addition to grants from the government. My school also offered the Work Study program (yours should too), which helps you find on-campus jobs that are usually pretty easy. The good (and bad) part about this is that you can only work 20 hours a week.

My university offered my a 2000 scholarship going into my 2nd year because I had a really high GPA my 1st year (above 3.5), so I definitely recommend keeping your GPA up!

Raising your GPA can only help you, but 2.5 isn't bad. You're financial aid should be higher because of no family contribution but be aware, a lot of schools are cutting back on how much aid they offer (although i'm not sure if that includes state schools or not). You won't really know about how much aid you're eligible for until you get your fafsa results and they tell you an estimite of what you're eligible for. (If you want to try it out while waiting for your results theres a practice fafsa with instant results at: http://www.fafsa4caster.ed.gov/F4CApp/index/index.... )

Please understand regardless of your fafsa you will most likely have to work to cover some of the costs - it's not very likely that they'll cover all expenses unless you're a very accomplished student with high credentials who's able to bring in scholarship money as well as financial aid. But going to community college first will really help you with that because you'll have an opportunity to save some money.