I’m not sure, but I don’t want to derail @peanutmom1 ’s thread further to discuss COAs, so I’ve created a new thread for anyone who wants to continue the general COA discussion there:
In a recent thread , a discussion began about the figures for cost-of-attendance. Cost of Attendance is supposed to be a more all-encompassing number for the cost of attending college, including books, personal expenses, etc.
When comparing costs across colleges, I typically prefer to use tuition & fees plus room & board as the costs across those tend to be pretty standardized across schools, whereas I find too wide a range for the “other” expenses to be useful, as some colleges are more generous in estimating costs than others.
Do you find that the COA costs reported by your children’s institutions have been accurate? Were they too high? Too low? Too high in certain areas and too low in others? Were you (or your students) ever surveyed about what the financial expenses have been for these areas?
Feel free to add in other questions/discussion points about COAs.
As an FYI, here are the numbers used for some NYC and Chicago area schools, with the data pulled from the College Boar…
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