This catch-all category often includes things like travel, EC fees/club dues, computer, etc, but seems to vary widely from school to school. Please name the school and how accurate you found this estimate to be.
It is only accurate in the sense that it’s the best guess on the part of the financial aid office about how much the typical student might spend. YMMV. For example, my D went to a school that had non-direct-cost COA components that we knew were higher than she needed to spend. We figured out our own budget for personal items, entertainment/travel (didn’t care how much others spent - we have never lived to keep up with the Joneses), costs to travel to/from home, book budget (we always ended up spending less, because we bought used online whenever possible), that sort of thing. We used that to recompute the non-direct-cost portion of the COA for the schools she was considering, allowing us to compare apples to apples. Had we not done that, we may not have realized how much less the seemingly more expensive school she attended actually was for her.
What you’re asking for won’t be helpful. Some schools don’t even have those fees because they have inclusive tuition.
I don’t know the “catch all” category that mixes up travel with fees. Usually those are separated in COA.
COA usually is listed like:
Tuition and fees (or fees separated) $XXXXXX
Room and Board (or board separated) $XXXXX
Books and Supplies $XXXX
Travel $XXXX
Personal Expenses $XXX <= This is usually the catch all, but fees and travel aren’t usually in this category)
As for accuracy of the above PE, that often depends on how thrifty the student is. That includes clothing, pizza money, movie money, shampoo, toothpaste, etc. If a student comes from home loaded with toiletries from Costco and clothing for the entire year, then s/he may not spend that much. Often the PE category is paid for by a part-time job, Work Study, parents, or a combo.
Travel costs are often crazy in COAs. Sometimes schools put a minimal amount as if everyone lives down the road.
Travel to and from the school and local transportation costs (especially for students living off campus or commuting from their parents’ place) can also vary considerably. So can “room and board” (food and utilities) for students living at their parents’ place (although many parents pretend that it is zero cost and/or willingly subsidize that cost).
My son’s college broke in down into two categories: Figures are from 2012.
Estimated Books & Supplies - $800
Estimated Travel and Personal - $1,350
We actually never figured these into our college expenses. S paid for his books and never came close to spending $800/yr and he paid for most of his personal expenses, too, from the money he earned over the summer and over breaks and his on campus job. We paid for his gas and EZPass tolls for rt of 600 miles.
It depends on how the school calculates them. Do they just use an average value or they go by specific information (e.g. the major and distance from home of the student). Obviously, the cost for text books varies a lot depending on which classes, how many classes, and whether used books or rental available. For my D’s CoA on FA summary, anything other than tuition/fees and R&B are under the “other costs”.
Thanks to those that have responded thus far. As I expected, an exact answer is not possible so a calculation on each individual’s part is wise. Still curious though about how close or far you felt the number was. Which school really surprised you by how far off it was?
^^^
I think you’d be better off listing the COA breakdowns of the schools that your child is considering and asking about those.
Frankly, if you’re trying to figure out whether a school will be affordable, and it comes down to whether School A is perfect accurate in its COA, then likely you can’t afford the school. Everyone needs some wiggle room since no school’s COA includes everything.
It really is not about being affordable but about figuring out if I want my DS to do some research on what that number really is likely to be. I already can tell that an apples to apples comparison will require at least some research.
I’m writing a book on college admissions and found a lot of inconsistently in how these other costs are estimated. For my book, I have chosen to use only actual fees and the colleges estimate for books and have excluded any travel or personal expenses estimate. Oddly, in some cases they seemed to overstate costs or not be clear about medical insurance
Medical insurance is clearly not included in my D’s CoA (and none of the schools she was admitted too).
I guess most schools would just use an average value while the standard deviation can be inevitably big.
When comparing costs, I threw out the indirect costs (books, travel, personal expenses). These costs depend on the student and the particular situation (distance from home, major, personal spending habits).
Tuition at my D’s private school is generally all inclusive (there are fees for PE classes like equestrian, but things like laundry and printing are included.) R&B are the same for all students. Her costs are easy to ascertain and exactly what I expected. And they freeze the costs for 4 years.
My S attended a State U and it was a lot more difficult to calculate the bottom line. Instead of one fixed amount for tuition and fees, there was a tuition amount with lots of add-on fees (technology fee, transit fee, Heath services fee, etc). Different majors paid different fees. Also, the room charges varied depending on the dorm, and there were so many meal plan options it made my head spin. It’s funny that all the fees combined at State U were still far less than D’s LAC, yet I always felt like I was being nickeled and dimed.
I think you need to determine how much it costs you to live and use that rather than the COA given by the school… Are you a Starbucks person, like to go to a lot of movies? Most of the stuff like laundry or books will be close at almost any college or not really matter (are you not going to go to College A because the washers are $2 and at College B only $1?) Both of my kids’ schools include admission to most things in the student fees - athletics, some concerts and movies on campus, gym memberships. That saved some, especially on football games. Books for one school were estimated at $1200, and that’s close for most students because most students are engineers. Other school had a much more modest estimate of $800 I think. Well, that daughter didn’t spend nearly that much.
I think college kids will spend what they have. If they don’t have it, they’ll learn to cope.
A lot of it will be driven by how close or far your home is from the school. We easily spend over 10k per kid per year just for travel to school.
^ It also depends on how many times you fly them home.
The “other costs” that schools don’t include is food away from the meal plan. My brothers kids went to schools with terrible food and his kids spent large amounts of money eating out. Worse they ate junk food and gained a lot weight.
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We easily spend over 10k per kid per year just for travel to school.
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Really? Are you abroad? How often do they fly home?
I know that my sister complained about travel costs from Calif to Boston and from Calif to the south for her two kids, but I know she wasn’t spending that much per kid. Christmas and Thanksgiving were the pricey times.
D’s school estimated 1100 for “books and supplies” and 1000 in “personal expenses.” 1100 is about what D paid for everything outside of travel… books, school supplies, personal supplies, entertainment. However, we spent about 1K on travel alone… 3 round trip flights across country and taxi/uber from airport, 50 dollar train trip to the nearest family member for Thanksgiving. So, for us, add the two school estimates together and it was about right but if D were more regional, it would have been quite a high estimate.
Lifestyle you are accustomed to can make a big difference. We’re on the low end of middle class and the 1500 dining dollars D got with her unlimited meal plan was just a ridiculous amount to her. That’s almost 50 dollars a week! She even challenged herself to spend it all near the end of 2nd semester (care packages for everyone lol) but she just couldn’t and several hundred expired. Her roommate who is below the poverty line was the same. However, her friends that come from wealthy families were blowing through them no problem. I don’t think they were irresponsible… I think they are just used to being able to do Starbucks a couple times a day and so the habit continued in college. My point in that is you should start keeping track of what you spend now and either factor that into your college budget or make a conscience effort to pull back.
My son’s were less than what the school estimated. He didn’t eat out often, and his college is in a small town without that much to do. His travel to and from home was handled very affordably by Amtrak, but he only really returned for breaks. Laundry is free in the dorms.
Yes, I thought u knew I live abroad.
The kids travel between home/school for summer, thanksgiving, winter, spring breaks. And we parents will go to fall & spring parents weekend, plus help them move in, move out at the start & end of each academic year. The parent hotel & restaurant meal costs add up fast!