<p>Tuition is $38,000, but you also have to pay for additional life expenses such as housing, food, travel, books, and personal items.</p>
<p>It’s up to you to manage your budget and decide what you can live without. AU makes it kind of difficult the first year, because freshmen are required to live in dorming and purchase a meal plan from the school. You will have to pay for use of buses, cabs, trains, planes, and the metro sytem. You will have to pay these transportation costs to get around DC and you will have to pay even more to visit home if you live far away. You will have to pay for things you need such as shampoo, make up, tooth paste, hair cuts, and all the things you use now. You will need to buy some stuff for your dormroom.</p>
<p>There are ways to keep the costs lower, but its still pretty overwhelming. </p>
<p>You can buy books used/online, you can keep the things you need to a minimum, shop at inexpensive stores for things such as clothing and dorm room supplies. Try not to need to purchase alot of food in addition to your meal plan, set a limit on how often you will need to use public transportation. </p>
<p>No matter what its still expensive. DC is a city so everything there costs more. Housing, gas, food, etc.</p>
<p>You can work and honestly I suggest getting a job separate from AU rather than work study program because you will have the opportunity make more money that way. Even so, you will have to take out loans if your family is not able to pay out of pocket for the school and you will have to pay off student loans once you graduate from college. The general rule is to not take out more in student loans than you plan to earn as a starting salary.</p>
<p>Btw, I think dorming is around $10,000 a year and the meal plan will at least be around $4000. Usually books are estimated to cost around $1000. And this is PER YEAR. Add up these numbers and multiply them by 4 to get a general idea of your final cost, but it will probably be more because it doesnt include transportation and personal expenses.</p>
<p>Thats at least $212,000
My advise is to apply for individual scholarships and see if there is any possible way the school will accept your FAFSA and CSS profile late, but I think thats very unlikely.</p>