Hi all,
My daughter recently was accepted into the Texas A& M Blinn Team, which initially sounded promising for us to send her out of state. After reading her financial letter we are very confused because the financial aid form lists
$32,000 + $5,000 loan= $39,000!!! We thought Blinn was suppose to be cheaper than full price Texas A& M out of state??? Also, housing is full but waitlist available…any housing advise for incoming out of state freshmen?
Thanks in advance for your input 
Good morning! I can’t speak to the tuition amounts, but I did see a thread on Reddit that mentioned housing recently. Several of the students posting there mentioned that housing quickly opens up once people begin to make final decisions on their admission and cancel their housing requests as some decline TAMU. I’m not sure about protocol and posting another forum’s thread here, so let me know if you need more help finding it. Maybe some other folks here can give you more concrete info. I’m as new as you are, but this is what I’ve read. Best of luck to y’all!!
Thank you, I guess I need to keep researching on both topics but it is nice that this site exists for us both
I would imagine you have to pay out-of-state tuition even for Blinn team, right?
Why are you adding the loan into the total cost of attendance though?
Housing advice: there are off campus ‘dorms’ , meaning they are set up just like dorms - roommate matching, meal plans, maids to clean, parking, on bus routes or next to campus, activities for getting to know you, and lots of other freshman. Callaway House, Cambridge and Traditions all are like this. My daughter’s backup plan was Callaway House - at the time, it was the most expensive, but very nice. They have nice amenities & bigger rooms than most on-campus options. Here’s the links:
http://www.cambridgeatcollegestation.com/
https://traditiontx.com/
https://www.americancampus.com/student-apartments/tx/college-station/the-callaway-house
Other options are off campus apartments without meal plans, depending on what you’re looking for. They have both furnished & unfurnished, roommate matching with individual contracts or whole apartment contracts. Vast majority of students seem to do a ‘dorm’ freshman year then to an apartment of some type sophomore year - many do rental homes - there is a huge market of rental homes but also a huge demand for them. Those do not do matching, nor individual contracts and also are year-long leases. Most are August-July. Hope that helps 
I think I did add the loan amount in together incorrectly, just confused since she is our first one going to college. Still confused as to how much this saves us and yes for out of state. Thanks:)
@lotstodo Out of state/international is charged the same rate at Blinn College. A typical schedule is a student takes the majority of their classes at Blinn and 1 three hour class (and sometimes 1 one hour class, called a spare tire) at A&M. So, for 10 hours at Blinn, you will pay $2460 in tuition as an out of state student. Here is 2016/2017 costs. https://www.blinn.edu/CatalogPDF/college-expenses.pdf
The meal plan, parking pass, sports pass, and housing will cost the same as a full A&M student.
The tuition is the only thing that you save on. Cost per semester hour varies by college and major, and OOS tuition just went up $200 per semester hour, making what I believe will now be $400+ per semester hour, so those one or two A&M classes will still be expensive, but Blinn will be cheaper until she gets into A&M full time.
Thank you for ‘shedding some light’, your time and input is much appreciated:) I added up the numbers per semester with housing and it looks like it is much cheaper. I guess I’m confused because the number on our admission is much higher on the cost of attendance so wondering if they meant after DD is fulltime into A&M? I also have heard that some students finish Blinn in a year which then we would not be able to pay the OOS $43,000/yr costs the following year, not sure who to ask at the office(several people had me transferred but no one seemed to know when I called them).