It does work . You just didn ' t get the results you wanted this time <| sep |> There are a few different ways of funding higher education . The one I don ' t think I ' ve seen in one of the top comments are federal student loans and individual state programs . Some states award some scholarship money based on the grades you make in high school . On top of this , I was able to fund my entire degree with these state scholarships plus the more hefty Stafford loans . The only real requirement to get access to these federal loans is that your school has to participate in that program with the government . And then of course there are private loans , which generally have a little bit higher of an interest rate attached to them compared to public loans .