Cost of Attendance.

LucieTheLakie
Fri, 07 Nov 2014 23:20:58 +0000

We’re talking about Penn State here, @pilot2012, not whatever school your daughter attended–which was hardly unaffordable if it only cost you $7,000 a year!

Penn State and Pitt are the most expensive state schools in the country for in-state students. They’re certainly not throwing big dollars at out-of-state students.

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2011/06/14/10-most-expensive-public-colleges-for-in-state-students

Yes, a lot of out-of-state kids attend Penn State, but many of them have parents who are willing and able to pay the OOS costs. Others take on a fair amount of debt, including Parent Plus loans.

Penn State is a great school, and if you can afford it with only Stafford loans, it’s an excellent value. But if you’re an OOS student who needs significant financial aid, it is much wiser to target in-state publics you can afford, privates with big endowments where your stats are above the 75th percentile, or (if applicable) public schools luring high-stats students with merit dollars.

Penn State is none of the above!

And there’s no need to lecture me on all the Penn State perks–I’ve got Penn State alumni in my family and was more than happy to spend the $34,000 a year for my son to earn an engineering degree there because I could afford it; he chose otherwise. I would not have spent $46,000 a year, however.