After Hurricane Maria, hundreds of Puerto Rican college students transferred to the University of Central Florida, including Juan Aquino who arrived in early January.

"Starting from scratch was painful, because I'm going to have to be here a lot longer than I had initially expected and would've liked, but I guess that's part of it right? You do what you can do be able to succeed!” Aquino said.

He made the decision back in October after seeing pictures of his college back in Puerto Rico.

“I saw the pictures and I knew it would be a while before I could go back to school because the facility was destroyed,” Aquino said.

After learning that UCF was temporarily offering in-state tuition to Puerto Rican students, he applied, jumped on a plane and started at UCF this spring semester.  

"First semester, I took it upon myself to just study really hard and get ahead,” said the journalism student, “I was almost done in Puerto Rico but now I have to take a couple more classes.”

Aquino is one of more than 200 transfer students from the island who at first worried about how they'd pay for school in the US.

"Many of the students that have enrolled are kind of halfway through their studies or just a few classes away,” said Dr. Cyndia Muniz, UCF assistant director of Hispanic Initiatives.  

Muniz has met dozens of students from the island and worked with the university to find ways to help them.

“You know it’s a big change for these students, the housing, the finding a way to pay for tuition,” Muniz said.  

Last week, the UCF Board of Trustees voted unanimously to continue to allow students displaced by Hurricane Maria to qualify for in-state tuition until Spring of 2019.

It’s something José Rivera has been working on since he founded UCF’s Puerto Rican Student Association on campus.  

"Getting that in-state tuition gives them, as the chairman of the board of trustees said, that stability and that certainty of being able to continue your studies here at UCF,” Rivera said.  

The decision to extend the in-state tuition for Puerto Rican transfers could mean thousands of dollars in savings. According to UCF’s website, the estimated annual cost to attend school as an in-state student is $17,284, where if a student is considered out-of-state, they could pay up to $33,382.  

For Aquino, he’s glad he can focus on what he came to do.

"I can't fail classes or I can't do poorly, because my family is counting on me to get through this,” he said.

UCF is also working with Puerto Rican transfer students who need help in strengthening their language skills and pairing them up with mentors to ease the transition.