<p>Thumper1 is exactly right. Do the math for YOUR situation and work it out over 4 years. On the whole, the state institutions should be less but in D2’s case, the net, out-of-pocket cost of two privates were less than our flagship but one of the state universities would have been free, likely with money returned. That’s based on D2’s scores/grades/ECs. For D1, a public state U was very inexpensive. </p>