<p>Careful about using these figures. Tuition and fees are one thing, but room & board costs can also vary considerably from one school to the next, with the result that the school with the lower tuition may not actually be cheaper.</p>
<p>One example:</p>
<p>School / OOS tuition & fees / room & board / total</p>
<p>UCLA / $28,897 / $13,310 / $42,207
UC Berkeley / $30,022 / $15,308 / $45,330
UVA / $31,870 / $8,260 / $40,130
Michigan / $34,230 / $8,590 / $42,820 </p>
<p>You’d get a very different impression of the relative cost of these schools if you look only at tuition and fees than if you look at true COA. Of the four schools in this groyp, UVA has the second-highest tuition but the lowest total cost. Michigan’s OOS tuition & fees are roughly $4,000 more than Berkeley’s and nearly $6,000 more than UCLA’s; yet adding in room & board, the cost to attend Michigan is within $600 or so of UCLA, and $2,500 less than the cost of attending Berkeley as an OOS student.</p>
<p>Also note that for full-pay students it will almost always be cheaper to attend an OOS public than a private school, with BYU the obvious and singular outlier.</p>