I’ve found a couple of college cost comparison spreadsheets online and wonder if anyone has any favorites of their own, even homemade. I want them to also show merit awards so when all is said and done in the process, I want my kid to understand the differences in cost for all her choices once all the acceptances and merit offers come in.
Situation: We want our D to go to the best but least expensive option available particularly considering med school is in her current plans. Of course, though, like many children, she wants to get far from home for no other reason than it’s far from home. We have opted to take an intermediate option with honesty about our finances. We didn’t want to discourage her to reach for “wish” schools, even if the wish is the location. Moreover, many institutions can surprise you with generous merit offer. Nevertheless, financial considerations will ultimately decide the day. A nice spreadsheet laying everything out would be nice to lay everything out.
It’s a good idea to start thinking about a spreadsheet. And it makes sense to save your money for med school!
For the first pass, I just compared annual tuition. Yes, other expenses varied (room, board, fees, travel… at the time in 2010 approx $10-$15K). But the major difference was tuition - out-of-pocket annual tuition bill varied from slam-dunk stats-based full tuition scholarship ($0) to in-state tuition ($10k) to generous scholarship at private school ($10k) to half tuition scholarship ($20K) to full-pay private ($40K).
Regarding the spreadsheet, the complexity may be based on whether you are looking at merit scholarships only, or need-based financial aid and merit scholarships. Combinations of need-based financial aid and merit scholarships may not reduce the net price in a way that many students and parents may assume, and different schools may do things differently in this case (sometimes described on the school web sites, sometimes not).
@ucbalumnus Yes we have had the conversation that if the reach schools are not in the neighborhood, then yes, it is the same as rejection. We have an income that will likely not get need based aid so merit is our only option. Our D, who is 90% of the time level-headed, even said, “Well maybe I just shouldn’t even apply to any of these schools” We replied that we have no idea whether she will get a merit offer that would surprise all of us and we’d never know unless she applied. In the end she gets it. We just need to calibrate her financial barometer. We recounted a story of a friend who got a $21K per year merit offer from a school, but that still meant that it’d be 21K per year on top of that + the travel expenses. She didn’t realize 21K was a lot…she was focused on the 21K scholarship.
In sum, she will likely be accepted to an in-state highly rated honors college (Barrett/ASU) and she already has 8K per year merit offer from ASU. In-state tuition is only about 12K to begin with. We’re likely to not get a better value. But like I said we didn’t want to have “reach” options.
Suggest that you include the following columns on your spreadsheet (since you are looking at merit only):
A. School.
B. List price, or net price after automatic-for-stats merit scholarships that the student will get at that school, or has already been awarded.
C. Reach/match/safety assessment for admission to the school (or major/division at the school if the school admits by major/division).
D. College GPA to renew any awarded scholarships.
E. Net price after best possible competitive merit scholarship.
F. Reach/match assessment for earning the best possible competitive merit scholarship. (Since there is typically little information available on how difficult competitive merit scholarships are to get, most should be assumed to be reach or super-reach.)
As results come in, change as follows:
Admission offer: change column C to “safety”.
Rejection: change column C and F to “out-of-reach”.
Scholarship offer: change column B to reflect net price after the offered scholarship.
Of course, if E is still too expensive, it would not be worth applying to that school. If B is too expensive, but E is not, then applying to the school would be targeting the scholarship (probably a reach) rather than just admission.