<p>I'm making a budget for my dad right now that outlines all the costs that will go into APPLYING to college (before he even has to pay tuition!) and I was hoping to get some insight from experieced parents who have gone through the process already. </p>
<p>I know, of course, about the application fees and score report fees, but what other costs come with applying? For example, when visiting colleges in April to make the final decision, did expenses add up to a lot more than expected? Were there other costs after sending in the application, such as CSS profile fees, postage fees, overnight mail, etc? </p>
<p>I want to know what to expect as my family isn't rich and I want to know exactly how much I am costing them before applying to a college "just to see" or some other capricious reason. </p>
<p>I saw a Today segment recently that said that the average (whatever that is) student spends over $3000 on applying to college. That included tests, test prep, application fees, visits and I’m not sure what else. After seeing that, I talked with our daughter to say that we did not plan on spending that much. We will pay for Sat and Sat prep (already have) and will visit schools that are close to home or close to our other travels. We really prefer to have her go to school in the north east so that flights home would be affordable. We will encourage her to narrow her college search by prioritizing and doing the online visits. After that, if there is one or 2 places that really interest her, we will look at the possibility of doing a visit. </p>
<p>You can probably find the Today show segment online. They frequently have college entrance segmants.</p>
<p>This past spring & summer there was a thread on the Financial Aid Forum on just this topic. I’m sorry that I can’t remember the exact title of the thread. Lots of people posted the totals that they (or their kids) had spent on applications, and some included detailed break down of the costs.</p>
<p>Off the top of my head I’d say between hotels, meals, gas, tolls I’d day $1500 or so. There were a few schools near where family lived so we had a free place to stay and were taken out to dinner. </p>
<p>We visited nine schools, DS applied to nine and one he visited twice. He did not visit three schools on his list. Of those if he gets into two we will go visit then (he did have an interview with the adcoms who came to the area, though.) The other school (state) he has no desire to go and if it’s his only admit he’ll be very disappointed.</p>
<p>On top of that there were the fees for tests, app fees & test score fees (but not for every school,) He had a private tutor for the SAT & ACT (approx $50wk starting last January then added math tutoring over the summer for 6 weeks so went up to $100/wk.) There is also a fee for CSS Profile if the schools you are applying to require that.</p>
<p>Aside from test fees and application fees, you are really just talking about the costs to visit campuses. You might want to wait until after acceptances to visit and narrow down your choices. Or, you might want to visit local campuses and any ED possibilities.</p>
<p>Maybe when doing an estimate for your dad you can scope out how you would travel to visit, miles in car, overnight hotels if necessary, etc.</p>
<p>A lot of the cost is associated with the application strategy you decide on. We were seriously scholarship hunting which meant applying to a larger than average number of schools, a fair amount of travel for interviews, competitions, etc, and all the other related fees. So, I understood at the outset we were going to be investing a fair amount of money into the process. I just considered it to be “opportunity costs.” I basically figured it would pay off exponentially if we accomplished our objective, which we did a few times over. I really didn’t keep track, but I’d estimate we spent @ 4-5k, including travel, from which D easily received well over $500k in scholarships by the time all was said and done. </p>
<p>Now, if the objective had been different, say, just to get into the best school possible with no major financial considerations, I think we could have gotten by spending far less than half the amount with visits still being the bulk of it. For us, the visits is where a lot of money was spent because they tended to be family trips – over the years we’ve become campus/college town junkies :)</p>
<p>In general my younger son found it easier to write the “Why ___ college” essays after visiting the campus. We visited five campuses where we could stay with family and two that were within an hour’s drive. We visited one campus for accepted student’s weekend where the University had negotiated a great deal at a very nice hotel, so travel costs were minimal. We had one NY-Chicago round trip air plane flight, bus to airport, two nights at Chicago Hilton and however much it cost to drive round trip to Boston, DC and the Bard/Vassar area from NY plus the application fees, plus the minimal cost of mailing a package to Vassar for their “My Space” option. I guess you can also count taking SAT twice and 6 subject tests. No prep courses or tutoring.</p>
<p>For my older we visited four campus on the west coast visiting family or friends. But we did rent a car in both LA and SF and had flight to LA, SF and home again. That kid said no more visits until April. Carnegie Mellon required plane flight and hotel room, but no car rental as the hotel provided a free shuttle. We took a cab in, but there’s an inexpensive bus. (Both were much better deals than they have ever been since!) The rest of his visits were drives within easy distance of relatives.</p>
<p>For us visiting some, but not all of the colleges before applying, and then visiting the places you actually get into afterwards seemed to work pretty well.</p>