laptop of One letter to a newly admitted Vanderbilt University engineering student showed an all-in price room, board, personal expenses, a high-octane US$98,426. A student making three trips home to Los Angeles or London from the Nashville, Tennessee, campus during the year could hit six figures.
This eye-popping sum is an anomaly. Only a tiny fraction of college-going students in the US will pay anything close to this any time soon, and about 35 per cent of Vanderbilt students those who get neither need-based nor merit aid-pay the full list price.
But a few dozen other colleges and universities that reject the vast majority of applicants will probably arrive at this threshold within a few years. Their willingness to cross it raises two questions for anyone shopping for college: How did this happen? And can it possibly be worth it?
WHO PAYS WHAT
According to the College Board, the average 2023-24 list price for tuition, fees, housing and food was US$56,190 at private, non-profit four-year schools. At four-year public colleges, in-state students saw an average US$24,030 sticker price.
That's not what many people pay, though, not even close. As at the 2019-20 school year, according to federal data that the College Board used in a 2023 report, 39 per cent of in-state students attending two-year colleges full-time received enough grant aid to cover all of their tuition and fees (but not their living expenses, which can make getting through school enormously difficult).
At four-year public schools, 31 per cent paid nothing for tuition and fees, while 18 per cent of students at private colleges and universities qualified for the same deal.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der April 21, 2024-Ausgabe von The Straits Times.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der April 21, 2024-Ausgabe von The Straits Times.
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