College Selection Tool - Finances

Level 5 - Ivy League

Welcome back! Today we continue our ongoing discussion on college selection.

Previously, we discussed the importance of college selection within the confines of academics, and how to use those academics to improve and narrow your list of possible colleges. 

Now we focus on the financial cost of college. 

This is one of the elephants in the room - everyone knows cost matters, but most do not want to discuss it beforehand. 

The financial cost of college has to be discussed in a few different ways. But first, what do we mean by the financial cost of college?

Financial cost of college can be defined in two ways:

1. The cost of college

2. The cost of attendance

The cost of college is the actual cost required to attend a given university - most commonly, this is tuition. 

The cost of attendance is the cost of actually being a student - think room and board, a laptop, food, or traveling home. 

Most think about the cost of college, not the cost of attendance. 

In our experience, it is best to think about college cost as a cost of attendance. The reason why is because the cost of college can ultimately be paid for with various forms of financial aid, while the cost of attendance most likely requires some level of financial planning, or at least, financial honesty

A classic example - can your family afford to pay for airfare between home and college? If so, how often? How often do you want to come back?

4-5 roundtrip tickets can easily become $1200-$1500 in cost per year. 

Do you need a car on campus? There’s another cost. 

That takes us to the first lesson - understand what your hard costs are. If you had to commit to an annual amount to give each year, what would that number be?