<p>What are the following fees for? What do they actually get you?
Math computer lab fee $80
Cinema Lab Fee $250.
ENGR Computing Access fee $75.
CNTV Resourse Access Fee $50.
N Topping Student Aid Fund $8
Student Programming Fee $55.50
Games Lab Fee $200.</p>
<p>Lab Fees pay for classes that are more expensive than other classes so they ask an extra amount from the students.
Access fees allow you access to whatever resources they refer to.
Norman Topping Student Aid Fund is a mandatory fee that goes towards giving need-based scholarship aid.
The Student Programming fee pays for campus-hosted events like when they have bands or comedians come to 'SC.</p>
<p>$45k / year and then they nickel and dime you with $100 fee here and there? Geez, if this was a business it would have shut down a long time ago.</p>
<p>The estimated cost of attendance (and likewise any financial aid) includes all those fees.</p>
<p>Reviving an old thread because this question has been on my mind after reading recent info about the nuts and bolts of orientation and such. </p>
<p>So next year's cost of attendance is over $52k, and I've been thinking about the extra fees (for example, a fee for the now-impoverished parents who attend parents weekend (!!); both an orientation fee + orientation session fee, with no overnight accommodations available for the spring admit sessions). Is USC a university that carries a private college price tag but offers a public university bureaucracy? </p>
<p>At the other private schools my son looked at, the high cost of attendance seems to cover more, and the schools seem to work harder to cultivate goodwill. Maybe I'm just grumpy because it's been so hard to get educated about how the whole spring admit thing will play out for my son. (Just one example of bizarre bureaucracy: USC won't let spring admits sign up for Meet USC because they're already admitted, and won't let them join Explore USC because they shouldn't be mixing with the fall admits, apparently. They want spring students to visit on April 27, which is a bit late in the process for a student still trying to decide.) </p>
<p>Any thoughts? Is this a non-issue, or a frequent irritant for those at USC or their parents?</p>
<p>RM, the bureaucracy does not seem too crazy at USC, certainly not in comparison to another school D is considering. At NYU the whole thing seems elevated to a level of insanity, to the point of where the university has three art programs in three different schools, and people in one of them can't take classes in the other two.</p>
<p>The situation with the spring admits you describe does seem to raise to a level worthy of being ridiculed.</p>
<p>Ah yes, I forgot about NYU! S was so ready to be in love with NYU until we visited and he discovered the rigid divides among the colleges. Very weird.</p>