Child enrolling at Cornell in fall. Two older children in “elite” schools including an HYP and non-Ivy (not trying to brag just giving a frame of reference). I love Cornell–I am totally impressed with its mission and what it offers. However…I already feel like the costs are way higher than the other schools, not only in terms of tuition, but extra add on fees for a lot of stuff in addition to ridiculous travel costs. Are there lots of fees? Is Cornell just that much more expensive? Are there ways to keep costs down? Can we expect more and more fees. Any advice would be appreciated
Agreed. I have one at Stanford and one at Cornell (we live in the West). Stanford is more generous with financial aid and doesn’t charge for laundry, the gym, charges less for medical, and travel is much easier and cheaper. Sorry, I have no advice on that. My kid loves it, and you can’t put a price on happiness - is the best I can say.
ok, just want to plan. if the price is not the real price, then we need to put some more aside.
Additional fees that Cornell has that I can think of off the top of my head: laundry, bus passes (for upperclassmen; bus passes are free for freshmen at all times and free for upperclassmen on weekends and after 6 on weekdays), gym classes, gym membership, not using Cornell’s insurance. I’m not sure how that compares to other colleges since Cornell is my only point of reference, but I have certainly heard other people complain that other colleges don’t charge for all that.
I have no reference since my daughter is my eldest but here are the things that are not “included” in the COA calculation. From what I gather some (or most) of these are free at other comparable schools.
- gym
- PE fee
- laundry
- printing
- occasional dorm damage fee (I think Bursar charged my daughter last year about $30 total for this. She said that there were damages in the common room and since they can't determine who did it, divided it to the whole dorm population).
- health fee (new this year for waived SHP)
Gym is is optional. PE fee, you can avoid it by taking the cost-free alternative. Health fee is mandatory.
I did read about the health fee, and that students were upset. It took me a while to comprehend that it was a fee for not using Cornell’s health plan. That struck me as over the top. Did not realize that upperclassman had to pay for the bus. No FA for us, so it is all cash out of pocket. Just need to to set it aside and make other adjustments. Are these costs why students line up to get apartments, to lower costs.
Since you are full pay, then costs are probably not drastically different. Tuition, food, and housing should be similar. Just the $350 or so extra for the health fee, laundry money, and bus fare (and airfare if you need that)…
Also there are internet usage fees if you go over the allotment. This is crazy.
And I’m surprised that there is no printing allowance.
@Renomamma Stanford has more endowment than Cornell, so it doesn’t surprise me that all these things are free!
My oldest D goes to Carnegie Mellon and freebies include public transport for all 4 years, laundry, gym (although you have to pay $5 to take a spin or yoga class for example), a generous printing allowance (she has never used up all of her allowance), no health fee ( compared to Cornell’s $350), no internet usage fees, free passes to all Pittsburgh museums, free airport shuttles, free subscription for parents to Alumni Magazine, (vs $33/year to subscribe to Cornell Alumni Magazine), free admission to sporting events, although at CMU there is not much student interest in attending.
CMU doesn’t have as large an endowment as Cornell, so I pay more for CMU though. Maybe it’s all a wash!
Don’t forget about all the winter clothes: special down coats and boots that we from the south will have to buy.
^yes, stuff that we northerners already have!
I second the winter clothes. We are from SoCal and winter clothes, travel/airfare, summer storage are HUGE extras.
The students are not charged for internet use unless they exceed 100GB/month. That is a lot of bandwidth per user.
The new health fee is very annoying. PE classes are mandatory first year only. Some PE classes come with free gym membership, so if she will want gym membership, tell her to look for one of those PE classes.
I laugh a bit about the bus pass as we never had bus passes ‘back in my day’. The campus isn’t any larger, just more densely packed, but my son did take the bus some mornings.
My son never paid to print anything but I sent him off with a very inexpensive B&W laser printer. There must be some printing allowance/student, but I have never looked into it.
I think that a large part of the reason the students flock to off-campus housing is the lack of on-campus housing.
I think everyone hit on the additional charges your daughter will incur.
One word of advice: take a look at her use of meal plan within days of dropping her off at school. I do not know the cut-off date, but I recall it being extremely early each semester. One can always choose a richer meal plan but cannot drop down to a lower meal plan after this very early cut-off date. My son almost never used all ten meals even though he was certain he needed the unlimited plan.
You can adjust the meal plan each semester.
Congrats to your daughter!
@CT1417 I am also going to buy an inexpensive B&W laser printer. Make sense I think. I’ve never seen one thing about a printing allowance, so I’m guessing it’s “pay per page”. Yes, I agree 100GB/month is plenty. I just guess I was a little surprised when I read this. Maybe CMU has it too, but I’ve never come across it on their website.
We all just need to get used to being nickel and dimed to death while our kids are in college. Doesn’t seem any different than when they were in high school. Seems like I was always doling out money for sports, music, honor societies, AP tests, lab fees, gym uniforms, etc. So much for a free public education!!! 
For printing, students either use their own printer or Net Print. With Net Print, you have an account and can put money into it whenever you want and can use it to print to most printers on campus. Cost is 9 cents a page I think, for standard paper. It can really add up though. I had my own printer (that my roommate used too) and went through a few cartons of ink throughout the year.
@Ranza123 – you might want to consider a laser printer. I paid $50 (or less) for a Brother B&W laser on sale at Staples last summer. Son went through more than 1000 sheets of paper (I sense that others in the suite used it but that’s totally fine) and is still on initial toner cartridge. The initial cartridges are supposed to be low volume but it must print at least 1000 pages.
New full toner is $30 and will print 1200 pages according to Amazon. For any college student attempting to stretch your budget further, ignore the low toner light, remove cartridge and gently shake it back and forth to distribute the black dust inside. (I am not the family tech person, so there is probably a better name, but it looks like black dust.) You can print for months after the low toner light appears.
@TiggyB62 – I asked my son how he handled color printing and he said that each student has a printing account. He never deposited money in it so I do not know how much they start with, but he thought of it as ‘free’, since he did not use it often.
Travel costs really add up for those who have to fly home, including hassles of getting to/from Syracuse airport. We did not come anywhere close to spending Cornell’s COA but that is b/c my son could take the inexpensive charter bus home and he did not incur storage fees since everything just came home with us.
I am not happy with the extra $350 health plan. I emailed the president and received a very PC email back.
My younger kid prints a lot more than my older kid, but she reminded me that she was printing required reading, which saved on text books. I am happy the total cost didn’t include laundry because my kids started to live off campus after freshman year. My kids rarely ever took a bus. They either got a ride or share a taxi with friends, therefore I am also happy not to have the bus ticket be included in the COA.
My kids loved to put concerts, sports events and various school activities on their bursar account, so I would get a bill every month. They claimed it was easier even though they were supposed to pay out of pocket.
yes, I also made a thread about how cheap cornell was even though their tuition is pretty dam high
@CT1417 Thanks for that info; I’ll definitely look into it! The printer I have I actually got for free when I bought my laptop at the Cornell store, but it only takes a very specific type of ink that is almost impossible to find around here and doesn’t last super long – I guess that’s how they get you!!
@Ranza123 – Apple used to include a free $99 ink jet printer when students purchased new computers during the summer student promo. We have gotten a couple of those and stop using them as soon as the ink dries up b/c of the cost of replacement ink.
Check the Staples sale booklet on line Sundays during July/Aug as that is when they tend to run the printer sales. or, set up a notification via Deal New dot com for laser printers, but then you may end up with more emails than you want.
@CT1417 Apple doesn’t do that anymore. They just give an education discount of $100 depending on what computer you purchase. I just got my D her mac book pro and received a $100 discount on the laptop and a 10% discount off of apple care.