College costs

[TexasHusker]

I thought it might be helpful for those with children to know what college is costing right now. My son is at Oklahoma State University. We do have out of state tuition, but that is almost nullified by an academic scholarship he is receiving of around $11K per year.

He lives in the dorm this year and is on a meal plan. It is running me about $13,500 per semester. That does not include personal expenditures, car, gas, insurance, etc. Just what we pay to OSU each semester.

Now, he is planning on living in a house next year with friends, so we expect to save $3-4K per year on housing/meals. All total, we are figuring on $100-120K for his bachelors degree.

I do know we could have gone somewhat cheaper at a number of in-state schools - perhaps as little as $16K per year. But I thought an extra $40K or so over 4 years to attend a major university was worth a bit of a premium.

If we were unable to afford it, we would have had him live here and attend a local college. But we could afford it and we felt it was best for him to have a college experience away from home where he is fully invested in the campus community.

In two months, I will have paid his entire freshman year, and it feels good to have that behind me and I survived it!

[disneysteve]

Our daughter graduated in May 2018. After scholarships, we were spending about $15,000/semester not counting incidentals. That was for a small private school in NJ. State schools wouldn't have ended up much cheaper because she wouldn't have had the big scholarship there.

We paid the first 2 years completely from the 529 account. We paid part of the 3rd year from that as well. After that it was out of pocket. Fortunately, the school offered an interest-free payment plan with a very small enrollment fee (I think it was $45) so we were able to pay $3,100/month until she was done.

And yes, if we couldn't have afforded it, she wouldn't have gone there. Having her live away for college was extremely important to us. We instilled that in her from the time she was old enough to understand it. Living at home wasn't an option in our mind since we could afford for her to live on campus.