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Know your college costs before you make your decision
Choosing where to go to college is a major life decision – both for your personal future and your financial future. So it’s smart to have a good idea in advance of how much any college you’re considering could cost you.
The question is: how can you even get close to knowing that number? After all, there are so many variables. You probably won’t know ahead of time what you’ll be offered in financial aid; what scholarships or grants you may receive; what your personal costs beyond tuition, room and board will be; or how much you’ll need to borrow in student loans – and what that will cost you in added interest.
The good news is that there are ways to estimate all these amounts, and you don’t even need to be a math wizard to figure them out. We’ve brought some of the best calculators together to help you get a better idea of the numbers, and to help you feel more confident that the colleges you’re applying to are schools you can afford.
Step 1: Decide on your college budget
Usually, when you purchase something, you know if you can afford it before you decide to buy it. But many people see college very differently. They wait until after they’re accepted to figure out how they’ll pay for it. That can lead to students and their families paying – or borrowing – much more than they can afford.
Our suggestion: first sit down and have an open, honest family discussion about how much you can come up with to cover 4 years of college. That should set the baseline – and the amount shouldn’t change if you get scholarships or Pell Grants, because that’s money coming from a different source. This baseline number is about how much you and your family are able to spend of your own money, or feel comfortable borrowing, to pay for college.
Step 2: Find out which colleges are in your price range
Once you know your budget for college, it’s time to find schools that match it. A great place to go to is Tuitionfit.org, a crowd-sourced website that lets you input your price range to see which of the schools in its large database match your criteria. The basic site is free, and you can dive deeper into the details with premium access.
Step 3: Choose where to apply
However, even if you have set certain limits for your budget, it is still okay to consider some schools outside your price range, as you could be offered scholarships or grants that could make those schools affordable. With that in mind, we suggest you apply to at least the following:
- Your dream school, because you might get scholarships or grants to help pay for your education there.
- Several colleges that you feel fit you well both academically and financially
- At least one school you’re pretty sure you can get into – that’s your academic safety school
- And at least one “financial safety school” – one that you know you can afford.
Step 4: Estimate your financial aid offers
The Federal Student Aid Estimator gives you an estimate of how much federal student aid (such as Pell Grants or loans) that you may be eligible to receive, based on your Student Aid Index (SAI). As it says on the site, students “may want to use the Federal Student Aid Estimator before filling out the FAFSA form to help them understand their options for paying for college or career school.” If you already have filled out the FAFSA, then you have this information. But if you haven’t, submitting your FAFSA is a good way to get a handle on what you might be offered in financial aid.
Step 5: Calculate your personal cost of college
You may have heard about COA – the Cost of Attending that colleges post on their websites. But you should know this is a very general number. In fact, it’s just an estimated average of the price paid by all students going to that school.
Colleges are also required to provide a “net price calculator,” which takes into account your family income and sometimes your high school grades to estimate your likely costs after income-based and achievement-based awards for tuition, dorm, meal plan and books. These calculators are helpful, but they don’t include basic personal expenses such as the cost of transportation to and from college, healthcare-related costs, or the purchase of new technology.
Here's our suggestion for estimating your costs for each college you’re considering:
- Go to each college’s website and fill out their net price calculator. This will give you an idea of discounts or scholarships the colleges might give you.
- Then watch College Money Matters’ video on college costs and download our spreadsheet to get an even clearer picture of what a particular college could cost you personally.
A note on scholarships
Scholarships, grants and work-study are all good ways to make college more affordable, but many of these offers end before April. Most of them also require you to fill out the FAFSA. So remember to apply for them soon.
For more helpful information on how to gain a quality education at a price you can afford, visit collegemoneymatters.org.
Look for our next newsletter, where we’ll cover models you can use to compare financial aid packages from different schools and calculators that show you what various student loan amounts might cost you over the years, both in terms of monthly payments and total cost.
