There's this nice little nook you can find, where your parents make way too much money for the government to give you anything, and your parents are like "if you want a college education work for it yourself." So you work as many hours as you can get and it barely covers rent, and use the rest of your time doing school stuff. You take out loans for the actual tuition.
That was the experience of pretty much everyone I talked to while I was at school. "Financial aid is paying for school because I'm poor" or "my parents are putting me through school because they want me to succeed" was some weird thing you hear about but don't know if it actually exists.
It's pretty silly how they take your parents' income into account for financial aid, and especially for how long they do it. Actually now that I'm 25 and don't actually make that much money I could probably go back to school for something else and have my tuition paid for. Doesn't seem like that's how it should work.