By the title of the thread, I mean whether it is easy or difficult to stay within or go under the listed budget at one school versus another, due to differences in some of the estimated costs. For example:
A. Room and board costs. These may vary based on choice of dorm and meal plan. Costs when living off campus can be considerably more variable, as can costs when commuting from the parents’ house. At some schools, off campus room and board may be considerably lower cost than the dorms; at other schools, the opposite may be true. This may be particularly relevant if it is typical for students at the school to live off-campus after frosh year.
B. Books, personal, and travel costs. These are necessarily estimates, where student shopping and spending habits can make a considerable difference. But different schools estimate differently – some estimate as low as $2,000 for these items, while others estimate as high as $4,000. Some do not include any estimates for these in their listed cost of attendance.
What it does mean is that if one is comparing costs between schools X and Y, where X lists $4,000 books, personal, and travel costs and is a school where most students move to cheaper off campus housing after frosh year, while Y lists no books, personal, and travel costs and most nearby off-campus housing costs more than the dorms, the actual costs of X and Y may be very different even if their listed costs are similar.
Very good question. This question applies to any life choice in the United States. Ordering late night pizza or wings in NYC is very different than what it would cost in most other places. Gas prices vary from state to state. Cost of Living is slightly different in the college bubble from real life but it is a consideration.
As for books, I would say that that can be more uniform. Amazon (and a couple of other online choices) for rentals have worked best for us. The calculation for books, however, can vary according to major.
All things equal you may want to consider these factors, but only IF all things are truly equal. Your choice can depend on a lot of other things and once you make the choice you will find the money for books and snacks and travel.
When my kids were applying to college, I made spreadsheets to compare COA after receiving the financial aid awards. I left the incidentals - the items you listed for “B” - OFF my spreadsheet – for the reasons you suggest. So I was looking pretty much at hard costs: the stuff we would be billed for.
As to item A – I didn’t find that much variation at most of the schools my kids applied to, in terms of first year costs. They all mandated meal plans for first year students, without a lot of flexibility – where there was a choice I opted for the lowest cost plan and did my math based on that. None of the private schools that were in contention offered housing options that differed in price – for example, choice of single room – though I do recall there being price differentials for the in-state publics. However, the cost of the in-state publics was so much less overall that it didn’t really impact with the comparison - - the schools were still going to be cheaper.
For students receiving need-based aid at schools that promise to meet full need: those estimated soft costs are used by the financial aid department to calculate awards, and that can be used to the advantage of the student. That is, the student’s award will not be cut back if they opt for a cheaper meal plan (or no meal plan at all)-- although the choice to live off campus vs. on can result in a loss of aid. But when my daughter studied abroad, her financial aid was calculated based on the costs of her home-college dorm fees – the dorm fees abroad were much less, so there was actually a financial benefit to me (the paying parent) for that semester. (Of course that was offset entirely by extras that my daughter chose to spend money on abroad, as well as lost opportunity to her to work & earn spending money – but she felt the burden of that more than I, because of the parent/kid financial arrangement we had. I paid the bill that came from the bursar… she managed all the direct pay stuff)
I’ve advised friends to figure out their own estimated costs for travel. For example, $1,000 for travel for a California college for a student who lives in the midwest isn’t realistic, especially for the first year, when the family needs to figure in the cost of one or two parents taking the student to school for the first time.
I’d add that as west-coasters, we had another expense to factor in – not included in the college COA: the cost of warm winter clothing. Not a deal breaker by any means, but definitely an added expense for kids growing up in an area where winter temperatures rarely dip below 40 degrees.
People have to use their own good sense and adjust the published COAs to accommodate reasonable expectations for cost of books/materials/etc., and for likely personal and transportation costs. I like the calculators at Finaid.org because they do break out the various factors and thus make it pretty obvious when different institutions use different figures or neglect to include any given line item: http://www.finaid.org/calculators/awardletteradvanced.phtml
We’re a spreadsheet family as well and here’s the biggest mystery item “mandatory student fees”…this can really vary…and many times public universities use this bucket when they’re not allowed (by state legislatures) to raise the tuition. These can run $2000 a year and more.
You really need to dig into how the COA was calculated.
For example, my daughter’s school use the cost of a full meal plan in its COA. However, the school offers many lower cost options which would save a lot of money. Some schools only offer one required option so it varies. Same goes for room costs. Bare in mind, at some schools the upperclassman on campus housing can be more expensive. As noted above, off campus housing is not always cheaper.
For books it varies. You can often save a lot buying used or renting. However some schools require online access codes (often seen in engineering programs) that could make saving on books difficult. Also some fields such as stem majors need more expensive books that might be difficult to buy used in later years.
Personal expenses can be highly variable. A lot depends on how carefully the student budgets their money.
In our case, our actual cost is lower that the COA even with living on campus. But we live close to the school and our student spends very little on eating out and has been very lucky with books.
Student fees. Often included in cost (with tuition) but sometimes not. One daughter’s fees are about $800, the other’s are $375. Additional lab fees. DD#1 pays a $25 per class studio fee. DD#2’s tuition is $2000 per year more because of the lab fees (flat fee, paid by all STEM majors).
I had to review their fall bills to figure out the taxes yesterday. The theater major had $219 in books and supplies; the engineer was at $1511 (including a computer, lab goggles and apron, but not a calculator as we had one).
One surprise was that the college DD1 attends, you pay per credit. The quoted tuition is for 15 credits per semester, but she took 17.5 the first semester, so the tuition was almost $1000 more than expected. I didn’t like that at all.
@twoinanddone - I totally get it about the random supplies for a theater major! Happykid studied theater tech/design . There were always class-required supplies that went into her QEE: stage makeup, sewing shears for the costume design class, lighting & drafting software, etc. etc. It was good discipline to learn to pay attention to that because now she has to keep track of this sort of item for her Schedule C deductions.