Published by Forbes
At the Hmong College Prep Academy in St. Paul, Minnesota, cost—or more precisely, the true cost of college—is the first thing that counselor Toni Marie O’Daniel talks about with her 400 college-bound juniors and seniors. If the price of a school sounds too high “my kids won’t even apply. They won’t look. They’re freaked out,” says O’Daniel, who warns recruiters from private colleges not to even mention their sticker price. Instead, she drives home this message: “If you have excellent grades, great rigor of classes, excellent GPA, and you’re doing some great things—there are a lot of colleges out there that meet 100% of your (financial) need.” In the case of her students, that need is substantial since 85% of them are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.
The Hmong students aren’t unusual in their aversion to high list prices. A recent survey of more than 24,000 high school seniors using the college rankings and search website Niche, found that 53% wouldn’t even consider ap to a school with a sticker price over $40,000. Similarly, a new survey of nearly 4,000 high schoolers by the higher education consulting firm Art & Science Group found four in ten students ruled out a college due to price during the winter of their college search—in other words, before they really knew how much any particular school would cost them.
It’s understandable. The nation’s $1.6 trillion in outstanding student debt is scary, as are the published prices of some of the nation’s private colleges. Moreover, figuring out the true cost of a school for any individual student is a daunting process. “There’s lots of survey evidence out there that the only thing that people really understand is the sticker price, and that’s the only number that they’re unlikely to have to pay,” says Phillip Levine, an economics professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.
Consider this: According to a report from the College Board, tuition and fees this year at four-year private not-for-profit colleges carry a list price averaging $41,540, but after federal and school grants and discounts are taken into account, the average net tuition undergraduates are paying is just $15,910—a 62% discount. The total cost of attendance (COA) for these schools—a figure that also includes room, board, books and travel—is $60,420, while the net students are paying is $34,790, a 42% discount. That net price average is still a hefty sum for a middle-class family to cough up or borrow and it isn’t very useful when it comes to your college search, since it varies dramatically based on a student’s family income and an individual school’s resources.
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