As an out-stater starting graduate school in the fall, my tuition is $30,000 more than my in-state counterparts. Since I’ll be spending at least four years in Florida, decreasing my student loans and other debts will be awesome. My google-fu is weak so I turning to the Dope to find relevant information.
Don’t know if it’s relevant, but I am hoping to find a place by Late July/Early August.
FL Resident and student.
Must establish permanent residency (change DL, voter registration, car tags, etc.)
Wait 12 months.
Then you are eligible for in-state FL tuition.
To note in passing, this is not the requirements for “legal residence in Florida,” which is simply to move there with the intent to remain there quasi-permanently, which can be accomplished by renting a dwelling place (house, apartment, room, etc.) and making any necessary changes to personal paperwork (forwarding mail, changing driver’s license if any, etc.). What’s addressed by jtgain and Duckster above is establishing residence for the purpose of paying in-state tuition – and the state, for good reason, makes it more onerous to qualify for the resident tuition break than to simply establish legal residence.
You can vote, get a resident hunting or fishing license, etc., much more easily than you can qualify for tuition reduction afforded bona fide residents. And the reason is obvious: people will move to a city siting a good college for the time they attend college, get their education subsidized by the state taxpayers, then move away again. Requiring a year’s formal residency to qualify for the in-state tuition break is entirely within the Legislature’s powers to require.