Out of State

Hi All,
The University of Minnesota is my top choice, I want to go there pretty badly, but being OOS I want to know the value of the university. My EFC is $7,500 and my grandparents have $15,000 for each grandchild per year. I am going to be studying Chemical engineering and most likely living on campus for a year or two before off campus. How much money should I be prepared to borrow in order for UMN to still be a legitimate option. As of now the expected cost for me is just over $40k, taking away what I will be able to pay, it’s currently down to $17.5k. I appreciate all help Thank you

We are from Wisconsin, so have tuition reciprocity. Our EFC is 7408. My son received his financial aid package letter from UMN and he only qualified for student loans, work study and parent loans…no grant aid.

Without that grant aid does the price become slightly unreasonable? I assume that the reciprocity is probably relatively similar to the 15k that my grandparents can provide

Just be aware of the UMN plan to continue to aggressively raise tuition for OOS. 2017 is up 9% to 26k from 23.8k for 2016. By 2020 it is planned to be 35k. This is tuition and doesn’t include other costs like housing and meals and books and travel. All increases are decided and approved annually so nothing is certain. But we’re factoring in these steep hikes in our selection process.

DS received his Financial Aid package. We are out of state and there is no reciprocity between our state and MN. No grants were offered, only student and parent loans. I don’t think that UMNTC is worth it as their tuition, room and board come to $40,000, and private schools, with scholarship grants, are coming in at or below this price. Given what @Banker1 states, by the time DS graduates, the total will be much higher - not worth it.

@MAlivin I’m sorry, I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking. It sounds like you know that your cost of attendance will be close to $40k. If your grandparents can pay $15k, that leaves $25k for you and your parents to pay or borrow.

Are you a junior? What state are you from? In general in-state will be much more affordable, so be sure to research those options thoroughly.

@MSMDAD
I am following the U tuition increases and it looks like that they fishing to see what’s the max amount of money they can ask for before they see a significant drop in their OOS population. The president earlier this year said that he analyzed last years OOS financial profile and he thinks he can safely ask for more. Well, lets see what will happen this year.

@am9799, you are correct that they will likely be examining the tuition hike on a year-by-year basis.

Important to keep in mind that any shortfall in OOS can be made up for from the international community and President Kaler has kind of said that’s what they’ll do. In addition, tuition hikes can support an absolute fall in the total number of OOS enrollees if the increase is large enough to more than offset the decline so that overall revenues still increase. Last year’s numbers didn’t fall by much at all so they definitely believe there is room to be a bit more aggressive in future hikes. A few trustees might get a bit squeamish come June, of course. Nothing is finalized till summer. They do seem to be gearing up for a significant hike for next year, based on what OOS posters are seeing from the FA letters.

A few CC posters last year were wondering how stats would be affected, but fall 2016 admission and enrollment statistics show that they remained similar to recent prior years (and notably above stats from even six or seven years ago).

Remember, even with the significant hikes UMN is still a better deal than other big-10 schools, at least for a couple more years.

@JBStillFlying
I had the impression though that they do want to increase the number of OOS as they really would like to bring more young people to Minnesota hoping they ll stay. At least I remember reading something of that sort.

And remember you are not auto admit to chen, you need to make it through to selection later, at best you are pre chem eng. Your stats are probably at the lower end for CSE/chem eng so consider weed out a significant risk. What options do you have?

@am9799 that was certainly one of the main reasons they kept tuition so low for OOS. What they seem to be thinking now is that UMN has more national name recognition than it did 10 or so years ago - those OOS applications are coming in just fine and will continue to do so (might be the thinking). And to the extent that there is a hit, it’s more than made up for in revenues. As the tuition model has made clear these past several years, universities continue to be revenue maximizers!

Looking at enrollment #'s through Fall 2016, there really wasn’t a major hit to the OOS numbers, at least in comparison to the prior year. Below is the change from prior year (2015). (Note: Kaler mentioned less of a hit - like 4 or 5 fewer? - so he might have been looking at preliminary #'s. These are final enrollment #'s off their institutional research page):

CHANGE IN OOS ENROLLMENT BY COLLEGE (2015 TO 2016)

CSOM +9
CEHD -19
CFANS +2
CBS -16
CDES -5
CLA -1
CSE +21

Total Change = -9

What’s interesting is that the three largest colleges/schools - CSOM, CLA and CSE - all saw basically no change or positive change. All three of these are getting much harder to get into than historically and I think must be seeing more applications from OOS than they used to. Not sure what’s going on with CBS, tbh. When I go back in time a bit, I see 70-75 from OOS more typically, so perhaps 2015’s enrollment of 91 was an unusual year. Same for CEHD: 48-50 more typical than 2015’s enrollment of 67. So quite possible that those two colleges weren’t really considered to have suffered a hit, as the 2016 #'s were close to a more typical outcome.

They must be looking very closely at these numbers, knowing what their targets are for OOS numbers, and figuring out whether or to what extent the tuition increase impacts that.

OOS acceptances are also going to be driven by things like admission to the Honors Program or getting one or more merit scholarship. The Honors Program tends to target the top 10% of entrants (stats-wise) so can be very difficult to get in for freshman year unless you have tippy-top stats (decisions are also by college so a 34 ACT and a 3.9 might be good enough for CSOM or CLA Honors but not CSE . . . ). Merit scholarships obviously reduce the effective tuition, making UMN more on par with in-state amounts. That negatively impacts revenues, but positively impacts OOS enrollment #'s. Not sure how it all shakes out!!!