<p>can people tell how they establish a cost of attendance for all the colleges under consideration so that you are comparing apples with apples?</p>
<p>recently, for example, I discovered that I was inadvertantly including, for one college, what that college called indirect costs with other colleges on our list that did not include such costs. So it made the first college look more costly.</p>
<p>is </p>
<p>tuition
'fees'
room
food</p>
<p>aka direct costs, what should be compared? or should we try to also fold in other costs? what are they?</p>
<p>don't know if you would it but I'd include 1,000 or so for books. Also if the campuses are a flight away...I know it's indirect but it would definitely factor into our equation.</p>
<p>When I compared packages last year, I pulled out ONLY tuition, room, board, mandatory fees from the expense side. From the aid side, I pulled out ONLY the scholarships and grants. I added up the expenses & subtracted the aid. This gave me a bottom line of what we would have to come up with.</p>
<p>I did not consider loans in the equation, because some schools put in a LOT in loans. That's not free money. I also did not consider work study, since it's not applied toward the bill (it's earned as you go) - and the truth is, work study jobs are not always readily available or even desireable (due to work loads).</p>
<p>When I did that, I found that a very expensive private college was actually a much better deal than it had appeared at first glance.</p>