When we visited the UW-Madison campus last year, I felt the tuition was reasonable for an OOS student and a bargain compared to UMich. Sadly, we were unaware of the plan in place for tuition increases of 10K and when I looked over the cost estimates for next year and beyond it doesn’t seem like a good value anymore. Do other non-residents feel like I do? Of course, I understand the reasons behind the increases, but I wish I had done more research…
Apparently, UW thought it was an unreasonably good bargain.
Still a bargain in our view. I had read somewhere that the second round of proposed increases, from $32-36, has not been approved but maybe that happened and I missed it. We assumed they would go through in any event.
Still a bargain compared to full pay at private. As an OOS kid who had also considered Michifan, my kid much preferred Madison as state capitol etc, to Ann Arbor, so he had no doubts.
Both of my daughters applied and were accepted though neither attended. What I thought was attractive about Wisconsin was that 5 years at Wisconsin cost less than 4 years at private, so in effect, one could do a 3-2 program without even changing schools.
Is that no longer the case?
We visited UW-Madison last week and saw that the total cost per year of OOS undergrad was close to 50k. Not worth it.
My daughter loved it and preferred it to Michigan as well, but since we are IL residents it makes more sense to attend UIUC. I have to assume the remaining 4K increase will go through.
For prospective families, from a current OOS family, our experience was that the estimated costs outside of tuition and room and board are overly generous. My kid never spent as much on books, travel or any other assorted expenses UW projected, and UW on campus room and board runs several thousand dollars less than most schools. OOS tuition next year is $32.685 and room and board is about $10.5 – for us, that is well below what privates are running at or about $60k. How finances balance out is obviously personal to each family.
@Midwestmomofboys - that is useful information and consistent with what current students we know at Wisconsin (we are OOS) tell us. My daughter is there today and tomorrow visiting.
This is very helpful! I am also debating between university of Michigan or UW- Madisom
My son declined the offer of admission because of the tuition increases coupled with financial cuts to University support at the state level. Felt like student services would be impacted, number of sections offered would decrease and the likelihood of taking more than four years to graduate would increase.