In the break down colleges provide of “other costs” – ie books, transportation, personal (the other stuff that goes into total cost of atttendance) – is there any basis for these estimates are they kind of pulled out of thin air? Wondering why one may estimate $200 for transportation and another school would estimate, say, $1500?
You should do your own estimate for those costs. They are not very accurate.
I’m sure there is some magic formula and they probably guess on the high side to make sure no one gets blindsided with an expense they can’t afford. Most of the transportation I’ve seen hovers around $1000. The personal expenses for my daughter headed to Northwestern are $400 higher than the one heading to Wake. Some I’ve sen include cell phones, laundry, shopping, food, going out, and gifts.
There’s no magic formula. Some schools underestimate and some overestimate. For some students, the estimate could deviate significantly from the actual cost.
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Cost of attendance is developed using federally approved methods (including student surveys, cost of living statistics, and federal COA guidance). There is no way for it to be anything but a guesstimate, but each school develops its COA with great care. It’s not perfect, though, and it’s developed as an average. Thrifty students may well spend less.
The COAs at big public D1 schools went way up several years ago when the NCAA starting allowing teams to give athletes a stipend equal to the COA estimated incidentials. Penn State athletes got a stipend of about $6000. Alabama’s athletes were getting about $2500. Nick Sabin wasn’t happy. Suddenly the COA went up at Alabama.
NCAA athletes were never allowed to have their personal transportation (to and from home) paid, but now they can include it in COA. Some schools even have different costs for instate and OOS.
Colorado State lost their football coach to UF, and part of the release was a cash payment to CSU of about $1.5 Million. CSU said they were going to use that money to pay the stipends for their athletes.
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D20 attends a school 2.5 hours from home by car, no real way to fly or take a train. They estimate transportation at $400. Based on mileage, our gas mileage, gas prices and tolls we are looking at $28 round trip ($56 for each time she comes home). That’s 7 visits home for $400 and that’s never going to happen.
I do not see how the estimated costs for transportation can mean anything since they typically give one estimate for all eg “out of state” students, but you might be coming from almost anywhere. Our of state could be a five mile drive or across the country (or further if you are international).
Otherwise the estimates have been pretty good in our experience. However, you need to live quite frugally to meet the estimated costs. I think that it is always valuable to have a little extra money ready just in case.
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Books costs mostly vary by major. Transportation and personal costs will be highly variable across students. Room and board will be more variable for off campus students than those living in dorms. Room and board costs for commuters living with parents will also be highly variable, and often not calculated as such by the parents (how much of the utilities and food cost in the household is due to the student?).