Any returning sophomore parents see this? Our daughter went from $13,000 to $18,000. While food was essentially flat, her bedroom will cost $500 more per month. Anybody else out there seeing anything similar? We feel like the rug was pulled out from under us with a bait and switch (given that they advertise that tuition stays the same for 4 years)
Well, the GWU website states that room and board for a first-year on the main campus is $13,000 and that it goes up to $18,000 for “continuing undergraduates” who entered in Fall of 2017 or Spring of 2018. Was that necessarily easy information to find? It wasn’t terribly hard, but I can understand why it might surprise some folks. Yes, when a college says that they freeze tuition for all four years make sure you look for the fine print!
Was freshman housing in a traditional dorm (small double rooms with common lavatory) and sophomore housing in apartment suite style buildings? That would cost more.
Was your daughter in a 6’er or on the vern her first year? Those costs are generally cheaper than other options. They did increase the cost of housing overall, but moreso the upper classman housing in general costs more.
Yes, it’s entirely normal for housing to increase each year as students typically get assigned to increasingly nice dorms. And as far as rate-locking tuition, that’s still the case. GW, like most other colleges, has the “cost of attendence” broken-down into tuition (the cost of classes, essentially), room and board (housing and meal plan), books and other fees.
Just to level set, most other colleges don’t do this… there can be some variation in housing cost depending on whether you live in a single, double, or triple, for example. But it is unusual to spike the price automatically after freshman year.