<p>Each college has two lines of estimated costs. The first is tuition, room and board and fees. The second is 'indirect' costs such as books, travel etc. The two are added to provided an estimated total cost. Since the miscellaneous expense could vary quite a bit from student to student, should I just look at the first line of costs to accurately compare the packages less any aid/merit? </p>
<p>If you are just interested in comparing the costs paid directly to the school then go ahead and ignore the miscellaneous line. </p>
<p>When deciding if the school is affordable, however, then you need to take a look at that line again. Yes, these costs vary between students. Try to make your own reasonable estimate for each school on your list. The biggest variable there is travel cost. Travel can add thousands to the bottom line, especially if the student is far away and will travel home for all breaks. </p>
<p>My assumption is that books will be close to the same anyplace. Travel will vary depending on how far away the school is and how often you expect your kiddo to travel. Spending money can vary… an example would be that a kid going to school at Georgetown vs. a rural LAC is going to spend more money. There is just more to do and spend money on in a city, and if the student population tends toward wealth, that has an impact as well. But I don’t think the schools do a great job of evaluating that.</p>
<p>We used the tuition, room & board, and fees, then added travel. Our kids owned spending money and book expenses, so we made sure they thought about the differences in their school choices, but that could play into their decision as they wanted it to.</p>
<p>Be sure, of course, you are using the net price calculators on each school’s website to get those first 3 costs (COA) for your kid.</p>
<p>I agree. The discretionary costs are just that. You can budget accordingly. Travel is one that should be taken into consideration. That our kids picked colleges more than 6 hours of driving away, really added to our costs. These last few weeks, it has especially strained us as we’ve had two deaths in the family, and chose to fly our college kid home for funerals at premium prices. If a problem arises at the school, the same can occur in terms of cost. There is something to be said about being within, say, a 3-4 hour drive max from home. Our cost this semester for transportation is sky high (literally) and that’s with my son having stayed at school over the summer and as an upperclassman, we did not go there to set him up as I usually do. We are definitely going over budget and will do so again next term with graduation. We spent a small fortune on graduations of the others as we have a large family. </p>
<p>We’ve been saving the frequent flier miles in case he picks a far college for those potential emergency visits. Would really prefer closer but did not make that a requirement for him. I didn’t know if book costs varied a lot but that would probably vary anyways by area of study. Guess we should shoot for a school a bit below our desired budget. </p>
<p>I have a bunch of frequent flyer miles as do my kids. With black out dates and the advance time requirements, plus they won’t work with full flights, I find them difficult to use. I sure couldn’t use them for my kids coming home for Thanksgiving. I use them for DH and me to go on trips. </p>
<p>I’ve had quite the streak of things coming up, and tickets had to be changed. Very difficult to plan ahead.</p>
<p>I always eliminated the discretionary costs when comparing and calculated those costs myself.</p>
<p>There are also other things to examine when it comes down to the wire. Some schools allow students to take unlimited credit hours or a lot of credit hours each term such as CMU. Others charge over a certain number, like, say NYU. And those extra charges can be a lot. Schools also are very strict about taking outside credit hours from other places, like College of Holy Cross. This can add to the costs significantly.</p>
<p>Another thing to consider is the cost and availability of outside housing. Some schools only guarantee on campus housing for 1-3 years, which means at some point in time the student has to go off campus. Going off campus at some schools can be very, very expensive without going into some distant and ratty housing. At other schools, one can actually save money when the kids go off campus. Pitt, Buffalo, Balitmore are all cities with good housing optios. NYC? Manhattan is pricey. LA the same. Also getting the costs of upper class housing options is a good idea. My kids’ housing costs went up a lot between freshman and sophomore years. They went from a double dorm room to a single, or suite, apartment type arrangements that cost more. These are things that you can examine along with other COL factors. As mentioned, it can cost a lot more to be in a hopping city than some sedate area. St Marys of MD has few places to even spend money. Manhattan? You hemorrhage it. You can feel awful poor when there is so much out there within arm’s length that you can’t afford. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Unless you are flying Southwest (maybe a couple of others? But not most airlines…) those won’t do you as much good as you might hope because of blackout days, etc. We are lucky Southwest DOES fly between our home and D’s school, so I got a Southwest credit card and those miles have been usable (pricey when the flights are pricey, but still helpful).</p>
<p>Another thing to note is that at some schools costs are higher for junior/senior year. I don’t know how the calculators handle that (my kids didn’t apply to any of those), but I know some state universities do that.</p>
<p>Some good points about housing and higher costs in the last two years of college. I believe our in-state would freeze tuition at freshman year levels so while it is one of the highest in-states going in - it may end up less over the four years. It also doesn’t look like the schools have yet published the 2015-16 costs so it is very difficult to estimate. It would be fair to freeze tuition at freshman year but I guess it’s not about fair. </p>
<p>We basically averaged the estimated cost of books and miscellaneous expenses for all the schools and created a range of costs for each one. We also looked at past tuition and room and board costs to get an idea of how our costs were likely to increase over time. The flights do add up and the initial startup costs were higher than we expected–clothes for a much colder climate, all the stuff needed for a dorm room that we couldn’t just bring from home on the plane, both mom and dad flying out to move her in. So far (one semester in) the ordinary expenses are within the range we calculated for this school and tending towards the lower end, and we’ve been able to find affordable flights. I spent a fair amount of time looking at the numbers and calculating a range of out of pocket costs for each school so we could compare.</p>
<p>We are flying a kid home using FF points with USAir. Not a problem except the points required around Christmas are DOUBLE what they are for non-peak times. As noted, Southwest doesn’t have blackout dates.</p>
<p>We looked at what our net costs would be…and this included travel, books and anything else we would be paying for.</p>
<p>One of our kids went to college 3000 miles away. She understood that this meant she would not be flown home for Thanksgiving or the Spring Break. It was just too costly (and over the four years, it got even MORE costly to fly…so consider that too). </p>
<p>I only used direct costs when comparing schools. The indirect costs are just a guess, and my guess is better than theirs. </p>
<p>That is how I look at it. Colleges make very different assumptions about travel, incidental and book costs. Strip those away and compare tuition and room and board. This type of analysis helps you choose between colleges. If you want to understand whether you can afford college include a provision for books, incidentals and travel</p>
<p>When we compared colleges, we compared OUR net costs for the student to attend. The amount of aid on,y mattered in terms of the net cost. </p>
<p>As an example…a $60,000 school with $40,000 in need based aid would have a net cost that is less than a $30,000 school with no aid at all.</p>
<p>We added in OUR best estimates of personal costs. As noted, we knew those the best.</p>
<p>Also look at AP policies and major & degree requirements. They can vary a lot by school and could lead to pretty big difference in expenditure.</p>
<p>Obviously, some schools accept very few APs or require you to stay 4 years regardless (I believe Northwestern is still like that).
A school like Wisconsin takes many AP credits, and you need only 3’s to get them, but the school and major graduation requirements are such that a ton of APs still might not allow you to save on tuition money.
However, at UIUC, if you come in with a ton of AP credits, you could conceivably keep below 12 credit hours every semester (paying roughly 2/3rds the fulltime tuition rate) and still graduate in 4 years. This plan may only work if you don’t require or won’t get fin aid, though. BTW, UIUC awards 20 semester credit-hours for a 5 in AP Chinese, which is the most generous amount I’ve found for any test anywhere.</p>
<p>UT-Austin also gives credit for a ton of tests (as do the UC’s, but different schools there have various requirements that they require you to fulfill).</p>