<p>When your student has a list of schools s/he likes, contact with the admissions office needs to be made with the inquiry of whether the school if OOS public has any situation where it offers in state or discount on the OOS surcharge for a student from your particular state. Sometimes there are circumstances where that automatically occurs if your student meets certain criteria. If your state and the particular college have some exchange program going, there could be some discount on the OOS charge. Also some schools have test score, gpa cut offs that will make a student eligible for state rates.</p>
<p>This info has to be checked every season if you want to be sure it is still up to date. So much has been happening with the economy, endowments, increase of in state apps, that some old policies may no longer hold. Also there may be a number of merit awards that are open to all students that can bring the cost down to your state school costs. This situation, as mentioned by other posters, can occur at private schools as well.</p>
<p>I know many kids who found that their final costs after financial aid/merit money at privates and/or OOS schools were very close or even less than their in state choices. That was not our personal experience, but it can happen. For us the cheapest option would have been in state full merit award/w state scholarship, followed by commuting to state school, followed by commuting to a private school that offered a good merit award, followed by a state school (boarding) with a merit award, followed by a state school with no merit award. Then came a slew of private and OOS publics that were all in a price cluster. Then there were the high cost no merit privates that were the most expensive of all. But that is not always the sequence.</p>
<p>Always check out the Education Common Market program as well. If your state participates and the student’s major is not available in-state, you pay in-state tuition as an OOS student.</p>
<p>At Texas, the difference between in-state and OOS tuition was around $20,000 last year. Next year, it will be over $22,500 (at least for my son, in engineering). Here’s a link (note this is for the fall semester only). </p>
<p>My friend happily had her D go to College of Charleston a few years ago, when the OOS rates were reasonable. Well, they jacked up the OOS supplement half way through her stint there which really hurt them, as they had a set of twins going to college. There were no scholarship or aid possibilities for their D there since the school does not give many awards, particularly to OOSers. From what I have seen, private schools do not tend to do that. They ooze out steady increases, but any drastic leap in cost tends to be for those who are entering that year and in the future, with lower rates grandfathered in for current students. State schools have no such consideration, many times.</p>
<p>Wow! It is very expensive to attend UT Austin OOS. I wonder if it is the same high fee for UT Dallas OOS. I noticed on the UT Dallas website, that it is fairly easy to establish in state residency after one full year of in state residence. Anyone consider that possibility?</p>
<p>mdcissp, yes, we’ve already started the process. Another dad on CC was just successful in doing that at UT-Austin, for his daughter. You can go to the UT forum and do a search on the subject.</p>
<p>You do not necessarily give up a quality education to attend some of these fine schools when they offer you in state tuition. There are many quality schools that are not in the top USNWR rankings (1-25).</p>
<p>I think there is a real gap between the top state flagships (Usuals suspects) and schools like Alabama. Is it absolute–or course not, but it’s also real enough to consider.</p>