Universities where annual tuition remains the same regardless of how many credits I take?

College Search & Selection
#1

Hi, I’m a high school senior in Canada who wants to have two majors (CS & IS) and a minor (either music-related or math). I’m applying to Cornell, HMC, and UC Berkeley. (They’re my reach) I have already applied to GaTech, and UIUC and UW are on my list as well. I’m just wondering whether their tuition remains the same regardless of the number of credits taken, and if there are any good universities to consider… :confused:

3.8 uw, 1470 SAT, 800 in Math II, 720 in both Chem and Physics (planning to retake)

Student council from Grade 7. Choir, green team, library, media, and yearbook EC throughout high school years. A lot of STEM prizes and many enriched courses (in-school, in-state, and national) as well as service-related prizes. :slight_smile: Taking 5 AP exams this year. 3.5 languages spoken; came from East Asia two years ago; a year younger than everyone else; female.

As many universities don’t offer major scholarships to international students and my family is not so rich, I’m also thinking of finishing university in 3.5 years to minimize my tuition. But looking at what I want to study, I guess it’ll be really hard…

#2

How many credits would you need to graduate?

#3

I think that generally if you are a full-time student (12 credits) there is a window where tuition is the same. I’m not sure if it’s the same everywhere, but at my undergrad university (University of Wisconsin, if by chance that’s what you mean by UW) 12 - 18 credits cost the same for tuition. 19 credits and over had an additional cost associated with each credit. You might want to look specifically at each school and investigate. The Office of the Registrar webpages at these schools might be a good place to start looking for this information.

Also, a word of caution - it is important to do well in your classes in college. If you anticipate taking high credit loads, make sure that you can handle the work. You don’t want to sacrifice your GPA just to save a little bit of money.

#4

You need to look at each school’s policy. There is no one correct answer for every school.

#5

What can you actually pay? A lot of your schools are likely to be unaffordable – schools like UW and UIUC will probably not give you any aid. Mudd is really expensive (tops in the country last year, I am sorry to report as a full pay parent :frowning: ). And finishing Mudd in 3.5 years probably would not be possible.

#6

A couple things:

  1. You want two majors and a minor, yet you want to finish in 3.5 years? I think that is an unrealistic goal, unless you have a ton of AP exams.

  2. One semester really isn’t going to save you that much, relative to how much college costs. It will be the difference between maybe $240,000 (for four years) and $210,000 (for 3.5 years) at pretty much everywhere on your list, since you are an international student.

  3. Since you are an international student, the public universities are not going to offer you much if any financial aid. It’d be better to concentrate on private universities that offer full financial aid to international students and/or places that offer decent merit aid to someone with your stats.

  4. Is IS international studies or information sciences? You don’t need to double major in CS and information sciences; you can just take a couple of extra classes because the overlap is so great. If it’s international studies, why not major in one and minor in the other, and then just take the extra math and/or music classes? You don’t have to major in everything you’re interested in.

Most of these colleges have a flat rate for tuition once you are full time (12 credits or more a semester). However, most colleges have a limit for how many credits you can take in a semester. It’s usually between 18 and 21 credits, depending on the college. For example, at Georgia Tech it’s 21. At Berkeley, it’s 20.5, although it looks like you can seek special approval to go over that.

#7