<p>In case anyone hasn't noticed, the price gasoline has sky rocketed and is not likely to retreat. Yet for all of the 6 schools my DS applied to, travel cost estimates by the school were unchanged from the previous year, or even two years. Ditto for books and personal expenses. Do these numbers ever change?</p>
<p>For example, a vehicle that gets 30mpg making a 300 mile trip will use 20 gallons of gas round trip. It is not unreasonable that 4 trips will be made during the course of a year. With an increase in the price of gas of $1.25 that's an additional $100. For the student traveling 600 miles to school in a 25mpg vehicle the cost increase is $250.</p>
<p>There's no relief for fliers. Higher oil prices have forces airlines to raise their prices. In addition, American Airlines will now charge $15 to check (and probably lose) 1 bag. Other airlines will likely follow.</p>
<p>For those that have had kids in college for the past few years, what has been your experience with increases travel/book/expense costs?</p>
<p>I didn't use the travel, books, and personal expense estimates on college websites at all. I seem to remember that all colleges have to provide an estimated "cost of attendance," but I find it distracting and misleading. We can estimate the travel expenses by researching plane fares (and we know they won't go down). We can do a pretty good estimate of personal expenses (clothing, phone, incidentals, etc.). As for books, all we can do is guess at a budget because every student is different. More useful to me was a review of tuition, housing, and fee increases over the preceding four to five years. Usually, you can find that on college websites if you dig deep enough. That's an eye-opener, and it's the really serious variable when you're looking at a four-year budget for college.</p>
<p>I didn't use the estimates either because they're too broad of estimates. Travel will vary wildly depending on mode of transportation and distance. Books will vary greatly based on the particular courses taken - i.e. several hundred dollars for a Physics book 'suite' (multiple books plus CD) vs. some simpler $30 small books or readers.</p>
<p>Just count on it costing more than you thought it would.</p>
<p>I agree. Travel expenses are extremely variable from student to student. It costs me about $50 to get to school (gas, but that was before the latest price hike up to $4/gallon), but it would cost a friend from CA a lot more to fly or drive across the country. For personal expenses...that depends on the person. Some people spend extravagantly, others don't. Some are good on the meal plan, others like to supplement, etc. And for books...I'm a true-blue Liberal Arts major (English, declared, but I take history classes and women's studies classes and all sorts of fun lib arts stuffs), so I've found that estimating $500 is about right, and usually I come in below that (per semester).</p>
<p>i don't factor in travel expenses because im coming from a much longer distance than most of the ppl at my college and the expenses are extremely personal.</p>
<p>I don't know about the changes in book and personal item costs as our child pays his own way there, but we pay for some of his flights to come see us and for off-peak dates, we used to be able to get flights for $39 each way (with taxes and fees, it was around $100 round trip) and his most recent trip cost $161 (with taxes and fees) and we felt that was a good deal as there have been trips that have cost us more, so it fluctuates, but the $39 fares haven't been around for at least 18 months now. With gas price increases, though, I can understand why. Going some places, flying can still be cheaper than driving, especially if it's just one person traveling but sometimes even with two.</p>
<p>I am guessing the OP is looking at it from a financial aid point of veiw. Financial aid is based on the COA so increasing the travel expenses part of the COA might mean a higher financial aid award.</p>
<p>I am also interested to know if FA awards will increase as travel expenses increase. I paid $98.00 each RT to fly to Ohio last summer to visit colleges with D and now that she is accepted and attending this Fall the same trip is $338.00 each plus extra for luggage! Who could have predicted the difference would be so much.</p>