Applying: How much it cost all together

Parents Forum
1

As a matter of interest, here’s how much we spent for D’s college application process.

She applied to 9 LACs, no other school types. We didn’t apply for financial aid. She also applied for music scholarships at some schools, and made a video as a music supplement for other schools.

Direct costs
Application fees: $185
3 were free for all applicants, 3 were free if you applied by a certain date. The remaining 3 schools were $60, $65, $60
Overall, this expense was less than I expected

Slideroom fees: $16
3 schools use slideroom for supplements and cost extra. All the other schools accepted the music supplement or application without extra cost.

Sending SAT: $108
$12 per school
A few would have accepted it via the transcript, but it isn’t on D’s transcript

Total direct costs: $309

Indirect costs
Taking SAT (took it once): $57
SAT subject test: $44 (took one test. this was a waste, didn’t send the score)

Used Khan Academy for test prep, free.

Accompanist for the one live audition where we had to bring our own: $60

Making the video for auditions/supplements: free
Very generous teachers at school helped with this, including accompanist and video production

Extras

Writing camp and 4 individual sessions with writing instructor: $615
obviously a splurge, but this really helped my daughter a lot, not just with this one essay, but with writing in general

Visits: $2,360.04

Direct costs only, of visiting 7 schools, most as part of other trips. Only applied to 5 of these, so 4 of the schools we have yet to see. None of the schools D applied to are nearby.

Anyone else? How much did the application process cost?

2

D is now a junior in college. We were on the Great Merit Chase. She visited more than two dozen schools over about 18 months, I personally visited a dozen with her in four separate trips, one which required a flight, rental car and 4 nights hotel, several others that required at least one overnight. She applied to 19 schools, about a dozen of them LACs. All in, costs were approximately $5000. I attribute some of these costs to “entertainment”, we made these visits fun if possible! It was well worth it.

3

If a student takes the ACT, and has multiple scores that they want to send (or if a school requires the full testing history), it can really add up. For the ACT, each test score must be sent individually and it costs $13 per school. My daughter took two ACT tests and each had a section score that would be good for superscoring (several of her schools superscored, and others took the best composite but looked at the best section scores in the evaluation process). So that was an additional $26 for every school that my daughter applied to.