When you first started actually looking at cost of attendance breakdown of your kids prospective schools, what made you stop and go "Wait, what?’
For me, it was meal plans. There was one college we went to that the food plan was close to $2K a semester. DS is an athlete and I joked that given what he eats, it could theoretically save us money.
But then I thought of my younger daughter who eats so very little and I thought, oh dear goodness, paying that much for her to eat in college would be the worst thing ever.
For all the worry so many have over tuition, what was the cost that stymied you? Either during the application process or after (prep me for any scares next year )
The only surprise for me…both of my kids’ colleges charged an “activities fee”…it seemed to me that these expensive private universities shouldn’t be charging their students this amount. It wasn’t a lot…maybe $250 a year. But still.
My daughter has some kind of health fee for $165. This allows her unlimited use of campus health services along with anything she needs such as physical therapy, counseling, etc with no out of pocket expense. I was surprised to learn that all of her PT visits were " free" without even a co-pay.
The book store now price matches, and her single room, although more than a double, is not that much more. I guess one could say I am pleasantly surprised!
At my kids’ college, the sports and health fees were listed separately. There is also a health insurance plan that you can opt out of. My daughter’s first two years, I paid for it because the plan I had from work had no doctors in that area, but when my company switched to Aetna, I dropped the school health insurance, which is a separate charge from the health center fees.
I remember that her first year, there was a $100 charge for the yearbook that I didn’t realize I could opt out of. I wound up with a yearbook filled with people she never knew. I complained and I guess I wasn’t the only one because the following year, the yearbook charge was one you had to specifically choose.
Oddly enough, I was pleasantly surprised by textbook costs this semester (his first). I know it won’t last but S lucked into getting classes where the profs are either not using textbooks or are using older editions.
The cost of books, and that you can’t get around the ‘access code’ requirements, often $150/course.
The insane cost of the meal plans. Daughter’s was almost $3k as a freshman, which is a total rip off. Sophomores and up who live in the dorms (and you are supposed to through sophomore year but they don’t enforce it) only pay $1775. Do sophomores eat less than freshman? There is no way she ate $6000 in food as a freshman. The room and board cost for one kid was about $8500, for the other $13,500. No difference in quality.
Daughter is living off campus this year. Housing is about $2000/yr less, and no meal plan required.
The happy surprise for both my kids is that everything is included with their student fees -sports, friday night activities (concerts, movies, ice skating). One does have to pay for her club sport, but it is the cheapest I’ve ever paid for her to play hockey, since she was 9 years old!
The housing and food costs for freshman. For my oldest back in 2007 I figured out I could have lodged him in the Comfort Inn every night school was in session and he could have bought 2 meals a day if he didn’t spend more than $15 a day in town and kept coffee and bagels, peanut butter and cream cheese in the mini fridge for breakfast cheaper than the dorm + mandatory food plan for 2 semesters. Shocked me. So glad when they all moved off campus after freshman year.
My sons school has had record enrollment numbers for the last 6 years. The school is having a difficult time trying to keep up with the growth. There is only enough room for freshman to stay on campus and a parking pass cost $485 year. A commuter pass is $185 and it is not unheard of to circle the parking lot for 30 minutes to find a place a park if your a commuter. He is in a 4bdr apartment this year and it says about $1500 a semester.
One cost that surprised and annoyed me was the cash portion of the required meal plan. In addition to the required unlimited meal plan she had more $ to spend per month than I spend. Of course they have to support the on-campus Starbucks, but D doesn’t drink coffee and is not at all impressed with their hot chocolate.
I don’t know if this fits, but I go to a private school and I never truly understood how much it costs without financial aid until I saw that a three-credit-hour class is $5700 (which is more than an adjunct professor would earn for teaching it). With fourteen weeks of instruction, it’s about $135 for every hour you sit in class, if you want to think of it that way.
There will be expenses on the back-end (i.e. after senior year) getting your kid launched unless he/she is proactive and has a job which starts right after graduation AND will pay relocation expenses.
Your kid will need to come home and launch a job search from your kitchen table if he/she hasn’t planned ahead. And unless the job materializes in your home town, there will be costs associated with that.
Do not let your kid go back to campus senior year without a launch plan in place unless you’re prepared to finance what could be a lengthy “I’ve graduated, now what?” quest.
The activity fee surprised me. It’s only charged when a student plays a club sport or takes a PE class. Nonetheless, at a school where most everything, including laundry and printing is included, I didn’t expect the activity fee.
@blossom makes a very good point here, but I would add that there will be expenses on the back-end EVEN if your kid has a job that starts right after graduation and pays relocation expenses.
You don’t get the relocation expense money until after the job starts (apparently because there’s no mechanism for paying it to you until you’re on the payroll). And it doesn’t cover everything.
Your kid may need a trip to hunt for apartments, a car, insurance for the car, a work wardrobe, first and last month’s rent on the new apartment, renter’s insurance, basic furniture (or the cost of a moving truck or UHaul if the kid already has furniture), and a lot of small things that add up (such as paying for a driver’s license and registration in the new state, paying for phone/TV/Internet in the new apartment, and buying enough kitchen supplies to make it possible to cook a meal). You may also need to keep the kid on your health insurance until the health insurance associated with the new job kicks in. Relocation reimbursements and/or signing bonuses may pay for some but not all of this – and in any case, the kid may need a short-term loan from the Bank of Mom and Dad until the relocation money becomes available.
Moreover, jobs obtained during senior year may not start for weeks or months after graduation. One of my kids, after finishing her bachelor’s degree, had a job that started July 15. Years later, the same kid, after finishing an MBA, had a job that started August 1. There were living expenses during the interim periods between the end of school and the start of the jobs in both cases, but both were very good jobs that you would not want your kid to turn down.
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