<p>This week's Chronicle of Higher Education lists the current year tuition costs of 3600 schools in the U.S. as reported by the Annual Survey of Colleges.</p>
<p>The ten most expensive colleges (in terms of tuition only):
1. Landmark College $36,750
2. Sarah Lawrence 32,416
3. Kenyon 32170
4. Trinity College (CT) 31,940
5. George Washingotn U 31,710
6. Hamilton College (NY) 31,700
7. Bowdoin 31,656
8. Wesleyan 31,650
9. Columbia $31,440
10. Colgate 31,440</p>
<p>Lesson? Therefore, unless you can get a discount, if you can't afford it don't go to one of these. There are hundreds of fine colleges in this country that are cheaper, many of which are also better than the ones on this list.</p>
<p>Boston University must have missed this list by a dollar.</p>
<p>I can see why Landmark is more because it is specialized, but as for the others...</p>
<p>GW is nice, but I don't see why so expensive... I live right around the corner from it but would never go there.</p>
<p>BU, Harvard, Yale, and many others were close behind.</p>
<p>Mackinaw, Very good point. There are some good academic values out there if you look beyond the northeast - Hendrix College in Arkansas, a solid little liberal arts school that offers large merit scholarships, costs only $16,000 a year in tuition. Rice is only $21,000. Trinity U in Texasis $20,000. And, of course, I'm not even mentioning the many excellent public schools out there that are relatively inexpensive, even for out of state students.</p>
<p>The one you don't graduate from.</p>
<p>Not to state the obvious, but the tuition figures alone are somewhat misleading, you must consider the total cost with room/board, fees, books and personal expenses. (No knock to you intended, Carolyn!) I can't help but thinking that some schools that didn't quite make this list are gaming it with lower tuition, higher everything else. $40,000 seems to be the rough top end, whether it's Princeton or Oberlin or one that you've never heard of. Either you can afford that, or not. If not, see Financial Aid Forum!</p>
<p>All of these figures are just the tip of the iceburg: the portion which the colleges (have the nerve to) charge families. ;) What it *really costs * to educate each student is a much larger figure that would shock many of us.</p>
<p>Sheesh...eight and nine...no wonder I'm feeling a little strapped lately.</p>
<p>Actually I agree with CLDad: they may parse it differently, but in the end, the total price tends, for high-end schools, to add up to tht same 40,000. (I'd love to know how Rice does it.)</p>
<p>Just got back from parents weekend at UVA....I envy the parents of the instate kids...instate tuition at Michigan, Berkeley, Virginia,etc. seems to be the best valuefor the dollar.</p>
<p>CLdad - Good point about room/board. That wasn't included in this survey, just tuition (guess they figure you could live in your car if you had to :) ) There is also a noticeable difference in terms of prices for room/board among various schools -- another data point to consider obviously.</p>
<p>Morgantruce - you have to wonder about "what it really costs to educate a student" when there is such a difference between low end cost schools and high end cost schools. I keep hearing that arguement but I've never seen any school actually share what it really costs to actually educate a student --- I'm talking the actual dollar amount per student that is spent annually. To a certain extent, I tend to think there is a real competitive pricing issue, i.e., "if school A is getting away with charging $X, then WE should also charge $X" - instead of a real effort to hold down tuition costs. Thus, most of the northeastern schools- regardless of quality - tend to hover in that $28,000-$30,000 plus category while schools in the midwest and south charge less.</p>
<p>well you don't just pay tuition. You eat food, you sleep somewhere, you buyt things whatever it may be you do more then just sit in class and that cost more $</p>
<p>There is a HUGE difference in room/board costs from college to college. DD is looking at schools in the south where room and board is about $6000 for the year. At Boston University (where DS is) the cost of room and board is over $10,000 per year (and that is for a standard double room with gang bathrooms and the standard meal plan). At College of Charleston, for example, room and board was very inexpensive and the dorms were mostly suite style living. BU's suites cost a couple thousand dollars MORE a year than the standard double. I personally think these kinds of surveys should include cost of attendance (room, board, and tuition).</p>
<p>What? No Colby or Middlebury?</p>
<p>University of California has R&B of over $11k plus your expenses to buy "real" food</p>
<p>Garland-
Rice does it by putting some of their very large endowment towards tuition. It keeps the tuition about 10K/yr less than the comparable schools in the northeast. The Kiplingers guide has consistently listed Rice as a "best buy". However, with all the additional expenses, tuition, room and board is about 28K/yr., give or take... That doesn't include books, transportation to/from school, etc. Rice does boast an extremely high number of National Merit scholars, and there is an automatic NM scholarship (exact amount is need-based, with minimum being $750/yr) if you list Rice as your first choice on the NM scholarship form Several schools do this, and you can change your mind and send in a postcard to change your first choice listing on the NM form, so it isn't "binding". Every little bit helps, especially with another S. in HS, heading towards college...</p>
<p>When I was applying to colleges in the 1970s, I gauged everything by list price, and thus ended up applying only to State U. But only a minority of college students pay list price. Fewer still pay list price out of pocket with current dollars they themselves earned (which is what I did). I was exceptional. Most kids get money from their parents to go to college, nearly everyone gets loans, and even the availability of and pay for term-time work varies from one college to another. I wouldn't compare colleges on the basis of list price--that's the biggest thing I've learned about colleges during my years of business travel that have taken me to a great many college campuses. </p>
<p>As to the cost of provision of college-level schooling, back when I was a State U. undergrad, the frequently reported figure was that one-third of the cost of my schooling came from tuition payments (that is, out of my pocket directly), one-third from state appropriations (that is, out of my pocket indirectly), and one-third from a mixture of federal and private grants in aid (that is, out of my pocket indirectly or out of the pocket of some idealistic person). There are very few colleges, and NO top-quality colleges, at which the tuition charges equal the expenses attributable to each student's schooling at that place. There are a wide variety of private and public direct grants to a large variety of colleges. </p>
<p>Leaving all of the above aside, the VALUE of anything is not determined by its list price alone, but by what someone can get out of it after paying for it. For some learners, those chillingly expensive list price figures are still a bargain, if they know how to leverage having gone to School A rather than to School B. What is too rarely considered, of course, is how well American young people could thrive if the HUGE investment made in college-level schooling per student were instead given as a principal fund for starting a business, or doing other things besides going to school.</p>
<p>Oddly, some of these schools have made US News "best value" list in the past, too. The main reason was that US News didn't use the "sticker price" but instead used the average amount paid by students. One flaw in THAT methodology, though - it deducted loans used to meet need from the tuition price, i.e., it lumped loans in with grants to make tuition look cheaper. Colleges do this, too, of course, but certainly a savvy analyst comparing costs should know enough not to count borrowed money as a price reduction.</p>
<p>If this list is for the 2004-2005 school year, it's not accurate. We're paying $33,030 tuition for our D at NYU. That would put it second, and it doesn't even appear there.</p>
<p>my college tuition is something like 12,500 a year.... and i go to one of them "best buy" colleges.. why is our tuition so low.. well partially because we don't have a football team, so we're not pouring tons of money into athletics.. but they also put the endowment towards tuition as well :) right now we're practically doubling the size of campus... for the past year or two, it will be done in a year or two.. and tuition has gone up.. oh i dont know,400 bucks? :)</p>