Net Price Calculators for College Students

Published on Thursday, April 7th, 2011 by Ryan Collins Category: College News College Tips

San Francisco, CA (CollegetoCareers.com) – The price of college is a hard number to pin down exactly. While many universities and colleges offer a close range to the cost of education, many students do not know how much they will ultimately have to pay for schooling until after they have received all of their financial aid information. This can cause problems on several levels.

Some students do not get as much money as they might have expected in financial aid, causing them to be unable to pay for a school they originally thought they could afford. Others, out of fear of being unable to fully pay for their schooling and are not knowledgeable about how much they could receive through financial aid, do not apply to some schools.

Net Price Caluculators According to The San Francisco Chronicle, thankfully in 2008 Congress mandated that all post-secondary schools were required to put a net price calculator on their website for students no later than Oct. 29, 2011.

These calculators are helpful on many levels. While some are hard to find and others are sometimes inaccurate, the calculators are beneficial for helping the student figure out the total cost of schooling after grants and scholarships have been factored in. The calculators do not include financial aid factors such as loans or work-study however.

The federal calculator works by asking students nine basic questions that help to figure out what the student’s student’s dependency and residency status are, how large their family and income are and what their college living arrangements will be.

The calculator then uses this information to figure out how much financial aid students with similar answers to your own have received. This amount of financial aid is subtracted from a semi-customized cost of attendance to get your net cost of tuition.

Tuition, fees, room, board, books, supplies and transportation are required to be included in every school’s calculator, but personal expenses are optional however. As stated earlier, loans and work-study factors are not included in the financial aid estimate. Grants, scholarships and other no-obligation help are, however, included.

For information on paying for college, visit our College Scholarships page.

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