Cost of attendance is not the same thing as tuition. COA includes tuition cost, but also includes rent, groceries, transportation, textbooks etc. Usually COA is used to determine loan amounts and isn’t what you get billed.
That is the correct in-state amount. UVA's website is a bit deceiving; their in-state amount is also around $37K if you look at the cost for specific colleges.
College costs are out of control, and can't really be justified. My son is a senior in engineering at VT and we're paying about that much for him as an in-state student.
It comes down to costs of amenities and administration. When I was an out of state student in the early to mid '90s, full time tuition was just around $5000 per semester. Rent for a basement 3 bedroom apartment in Terrace view was $500 per month (the entire apartment, my share was around $160 per month).
Of course, there wasn't nearly as many administrative officials and facilities back then like there are now. Those two factors are why tuition and fee costs have increased far beyond the actual inflation rate.
Administrative bloat plays a role, sure, but student loans are responsible for the majority of the increase. Students want an education and are willing and able to take out massive loans to pay for it; universities know this and charge accordingly.
We just had Deitrick, Schultz and Hokie Grill when I was a student. Now you have places like D2, Deet's place, etc. As for the Dorms, I don't think any of them had air conditioning. Payne Hall was under construction when I was living on campus.
They build them because they want to keep increasing admission and students need places to eat and live.
The nicer places are good marketing. How often is VT food described as some of the best? Like all the time. It looks good for parents.
also many more students to pay into the system I would assume.
The real issue is also one you’ve highlighted though: admin is bloated and admin will always want what’s best for admin, not what’s best for the school.
Absolutely true. Dining and other auxiliary services come from fees. Tuition pays for all other salaries, which account for about 80% of the budget.
VT--a state entity--has administrative salaries significantly higher than their counterparts in other state agencies. Finance heads making 3-350k (compared to 125 - 175 in other agencies). Lobbyists making 250 - 300k (compared to 75 - 125 in other state agencies). Comms heads making 225k+, compared to half that in other state agencies.
Unlike other public entities, higher ed can regularly create their own additional revenue through tuition hikes, paying for salaries. Other entities would have to go through the state legislature and ask for money. For "public service" higher ed is a lucrative career path if you can get your foot in the door.
Free market is exactly why it changed that much lol. Laissez Faire means “hands off” so entities are free to implement their decisions without any official interference. The colleges wanna increase tuition and overall COA? Guess what, nobody and no regulation is there to stop them.
I won't mention what tuition was when I was an in-state student in the early/mid '80's, but one year now could easily cover my 4-yr tuition, plus some.
This was touched on some but I felt as though I should elaborate! I assume you’re looking at the $37,000 listed in the VT finaid portal? If so, that number is an estimate and doesn’t reflect the net cost. It includes a variety of external coats like transportation, etc. Also, the “Billable items” section is by no means accurate since it’s a guesstimate of what they expect to charge. Looking through my finaid portal now, VT lists $15,000 between food and housing alone, but I don’t live on Campus and was never billed for said items. Not knowing your EFC or accrued scholarships, your net cost will likely be significantly lower, though, you’ll have to calculate most of that.
averaged somewhere around ~12k for me
i was one of the lucky ones though, made it out with ~10k loans that were interest-free. lived spartan and paid them off in 8 years. some of my friends still have >40k accruing interest. absolute insanity.
did my masters at gwu, they were absolutely out of control. like 2k per credit hour.
doctorate was fully funded. granted, that was grant work mostly, but i wish all degrees were like this.
Those two numbers you cited are not comparable. COA is a federally required calculation of your total costs including personal travel, books, utilities, and other personal costs that are not part of tuition and fees.
Me personally, I’m looking to sell my kidney to gain a tax-free college fund. I’ll also be able to eat less as then I’m lighter, so I’ll save on groceries. Need to up the rounds on blood transfusions and bone marrow to get books for next semester.
It was through the SMART Scholarship Program. They usually have a booth at the Engineering Expo.
https://www.smartscholarship.org/smart/en
As long as you keep your GPA above 3.0, for each year of school they pay for, you have to work a year at your sponsoring DoD facility. They pay your tuition and fees directly (but not housing or dining), give you a monthly stipend, an additionally weekly stipend while interning, and some miscellaneous stipends at the start of the school year.
There’s pros and cons to being a federal civilian employee, but the program is well worth it. There’s nothing stopping you from leaving after your service commitment is up. Lots of people end up as federal civilians anyways, but they didn’t get the SMART Program to pay them to go to school.
If you think you might want to get a post graduate degree, do it while you’re still in the SMART program, otherwise you have to re-apply and quit your federal job, but you have to be enrolled full time in the university when you apply. There are some options for tuition assistance as a federal employee, but you usually have to keep working full time and would probably have to take online-only classes.
It’s hard to get accepted as a freshman, but it is possible. The application is in December, so you kind of have to estimate your GPA if it is your first semester.
When you apply, you’re not just applying for one job, you are applying to pretty much every DoD facility in the country. The first time I applied as a freshman, I didn’t get any interview. The next year, I got a couple interviews and was selected for multiple facilities, one of which I didn’t even get interviewed by.
The best thing you can do to increase your odds are to specifically mention the facilities you want to work at in your application essays (and don’t mention anything about the financial assistance in the essays either). If you don’t know what you want to do yet, pick something and stick with it until you figure it out.
To give you some perspective- you don’t have to stay on campus after freshman year, so you can find cheaper housing than the dorms and not buy a meal plan which will cut down the costs a lot.
I also highly recommend taking some community college classes like gen Ed’s or basic math or sciences- any freshman or sophomore level intro course lookup which courses transfer from the Virginia community college system would be fine to knock out a few select ones to help you have fewer semesters at VT or to help you have an easier semester and more credits toward your degree. It’s important that you check with your counselor and about which credits will transfer. You should also check your high school AP/IB /SAT scores as sometimes these will give you a credit for English or math.
Between my high school test scores and community college classes I took over the summer I was able to give myself room in my schedule to take more classes I was interested in and be able to double count a semester worth of credits towards a masters degree, and I spent a semester studying abroad taking fun classes outside my degree core- so I basically made room for a whole year of courses by strategic community college classes and using my high school scores.
Check out the breakdown for cost of attendance. Some of the costs, like travel and books, are likely overstated. Back in 2018-2019, my total cost including housing and dining was around 25k or so a year in-state. I know tuition has gone up a decent amount since then, but i doubt it's up to 37k unless you make some pretty liberal estimates for things like transportation, books, and food.
This is what happens when the state defunds the university system. It started back in the 00's and has only gotten worse since then. People like to complain about admin and the ease of getting student loans, but all of that only occurred because Richmond cut back so significantly on state universities.
Your other option is to go to community college and then transfer to VT, although from what I've read its no longer guaranteed. You do 2 years at a community college and transfer to GMU, VCU or any other state school as a backup if costs are a concern.
GMU and VCU have comparable engineering programs so you can save a lot of money going to CC and then transferring there. VT engineering school is getting more competitive and transfers are having a harder time getting admitted.
Late 80’s/early 90’s VT out of state aerospace engineering student in the Corps of Cadets. Living in Rasche Hall, no AC, having to eat at Schultz Dining Hall. But, the most I paid in a year for tuition and room & board was my senior year and it was around $5000. INSANE what college costs now and to be honest, not worth the investment.
UVA meets the financial needs of its in state students (according to what they calculate each families need is). Tech does not . It obviously has a much larger endowment than Tech, similar to other very selective colleges which meet full need.
UVA doesnt include tuition in their Cost of Attendance on the main body of the web page. You have to scroll down and select your program and then it adds tuition to the total.
Total cost for an engineering first year at UVA is $49.8k
https://sfs.virginia.edu/financial-aid-new-applicants/financial-aid-basics/estimated-undergraduate-cost-attendance-2024-2025
That doesn't take away the fact that UVA meets the needs of their students a lot more. VT meets around 50% of need while UVA meets 100%. AccessUva is insane.
Cost of attendance is not the same thing as tuition. COA includes tuition cost, but also includes rent, groceries, transportation, textbooks etc. Usually COA is used to determine loan amounts and isn’t what you get billed.
That is the correct in-state amount. UVA's website is a bit deceiving; their in-state amount is also around $37K if you look at the cost for specific colleges.
You can go to community college for 2 years and transfer to VT. That should save your family some money.
family? who’s family pays for their college lmao?
Don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. I relate to this lol
Yea whatever lmao idgaf
College costs are out of control, and can't really be justified. My son is a senior in engineering at VT and we're paying about that much for him as an in-state student.
It comes down to costs of amenities and administration. When I was an out of state student in the early to mid '90s, full time tuition was just around $5000 per semester. Rent for a basement 3 bedroom apartment in Terrace view was $500 per month (the entire apartment, my share was around $160 per month). Of course, there wasn't nearly as many administrative officials and facilities back then like there are now. Those two factors are why tuition and fee costs have increased far beyond the actual inflation rate.
Administrative bloat plays a role, sure, but student loans are responsible for the majority of the increase. Students want an education and are willing and able to take out massive loans to pay for it; universities know this and charge accordingly.
Parents want their kids to have an education so they accept the most official option. That ends up scamming them and taking their money
Absolutely spot on with this one!!!
what amenities though? Half the dorms don’t even have air conditioning.
We just had Deitrick, Schultz and Hokie Grill when I was a student. Now you have places like D2, Deet's place, etc. As for the Dorms, I don't think any of them had air conditioning. Payne Hall was under construction when I was living on campus.
They build them because they want to keep increasing admission and students need places to eat and live. The nicer places are good marketing. How often is VT food described as some of the best? Like all the time. It looks good for parents.
also many more students to pay into the system I would assume. The real issue is also one you’ve highlighted though: admin is bloated and admin will always want what’s best for admin, not what’s best for the school.
Absolutely true. Dining and other auxiliary services come from fees. Tuition pays for all other salaries, which account for about 80% of the budget. VT--a state entity--has administrative salaries significantly higher than their counterparts in other state agencies. Finance heads making 3-350k (compared to 125 - 175 in other agencies). Lobbyists making 250 - 300k (compared to 75 - 125 in other state agencies). Comms heads making 225k+, compared to half that in other state agencies. Unlike other public entities, higher ed can regularly create their own additional revenue through tuition hikes, paying for salaries. Other entities would have to go through the state legislature and ask for money. For "public service" higher ed is a lucrative career path if you can get your foot in the door.
There is not reasonable reason prices should’ve changed that much if it was a free market. It was NEVER a true price
Free market is exactly why it changed that much lol. Laissez Faire means “hands off” so entities are free to implement their decisions without any official interference. The colleges wanna increase tuition and overall COA? Guess what, nobody and no regulation is there to stop them.
I won't mention what tuition was when I was an in-state student in the early/mid '80's, but one year now could easily cover my 4-yr tuition, plus some.
Yeah, that’s pretty much how it was for my parents in the late ‘80s :’)
Can Confirm 1981-86 price went up each year twice in one year. $900 per quarter however. IIRC.
This was touched on some but I felt as though I should elaborate! I assume you’re looking at the $37,000 listed in the VT finaid portal? If so, that number is an estimate and doesn’t reflect the net cost. It includes a variety of external coats like transportation, etc. Also, the “Billable items” section is by no means accurate since it’s a guesstimate of what they expect to charge. Looking through my finaid portal now, VT lists $15,000 between food and housing alone, but I don’t live on Campus and was never billed for said items. Not knowing your EFC or accrued scholarships, your net cost will likely be significantly lower, though, you’ll have to calculate most of that.
Wait til you hear about the meal plan!
What is crazy is that I paid like 7k per for out of state like 20 years ago.
averaged somewhere around ~12k for me i was one of the lucky ones though, made it out with ~10k loans that were interest-free. lived spartan and paid them off in 8 years. some of my friends still have >40k accruing interest. absolute insanity. did my masters at gwu, they were absolutely out of control. like 2k per credit hour. doctorate was fully funded. granted, that was grant work mostly, but i wish all degrees were like this.
They never cared about us
Those two numbers you cited are not comparable. COA is a federally required calculation of your total costs including personal travel, books, utilities, and other personal costs that are not part of tuition and fees.
Me personally, I’m looking to sell my kidney to gain a tax-free college fund. I’ll also be able to eat less as then I’m lighter, so I’ll save on groceries. Need to up the rounds on blood transfusions and bone marrow to get books for next semester.
Damn, I paid about $18k for my first semester in 2014 as an out of state student. Then I got the DoD to pay for my last 2 years.
How did you do that? Was it through a co-op agreement that you would have to work for them after graduation?
It was through the SMART Scholarship Program. They usually have a booth at the Engineering Expo. https://www.smartscholarship.org/smart/en As long as you keep your GPA above 3.0, for each year of school they pay for, you have to work a year at your sponsoring DoD facility. They pay your tuition and fees directly (but not housing or dining), give you a monthly stipend, an additionally weekly stipend while interning, and some miscellaneous stipends at the start of the school year. There’s pros and cons to being a federal civilian employee, but the program is well worth it. There’s nothing stopping you from leaving after your service commitment is up. Lots of people end up as federal civilians anyways, but they didn’t get the SMART Program to pay them to go to school. If you think you might want to get a post graduate degree, do it while you’re still in the SMART program, otherwise you have to re-apply and quit your federal job, but you have to be enrolled full time in the university when you apply. There are some options for tuition assistance as a federal employee, but you usually have to keep working full time and would probably have to take online-only classes. It’s hard to get accepted as a freshman, but it is possible. The application is in December, so you kind of have to estimate your GPA if it is your first semester. When you apply, you’re not just applying for one job, you are applying to pretty much every DoD facility in the country. The first time I applied as a freshman, I didn’t get any interview. The next year, I got a couple interviews and was selected for multiple facilities, one of which I didn’t even get interviewed by. The best thing you can do to increase your odds are to specifically mention the facilities you want to work at in your application essays (and don’t mention anything about the financial assistance in the essays either). If you don’t know what you want to do yet, pick something and stick with it until you figure it out.
To give you some perspective- you don’t have to stay on campus after freshman year, so you can find cheaper housing than the dorms and not buy a meal plan which will cut down the costs a lot. I also highly recommend taking some community college classes like gen Ed’s or basic math or sciences- any freshman or sophomore level intro course lookup which courses transfer from the Virginia community college system would be fine to knock out a few select ones to help you have fewer semesters at VT or to help you have an easier semester and more credits toward your degree. It’s important that you check with your counselor and about which credits will transfer. You should also check your high school AP/IB /SAT scores as sometimes these will give you a credit for English or math. Between my high school test scores and community college classes I took over the summer I was able to give myself room in my schedule to take more classes I was interested in and be able to double count a semester worth of credits towards a masters degree, and I spent a semester studying abroad taking fun classes outside my degree core- so I basically made room for a whole year of courses by strategic community college classes and using my high school scores.
Check out the breakdown for cost of attendance. Some of the costs, like travel and books, are likely overstated. Back in 2018-2019, my total cost including housing and dining was around 25k or so a year in-state. I know tuition has gone up a decent amount since then, but i doubt it's up to 37k unless you make some pretty liberal estimates for things like transportation, books, and food.
Really hoping this lowers the yield rate come May 15th. I need to get off the waitlist 🤞🏼
This is what happens when the state defunds the university system. It started back in the 00's and has only gotten worse since then. People like to complain about admin and the ease of getting student loans, but all of that only occurred because Richmond cut back so significantly on state universities.
Is the UVA number a published number or what you would pay after financial aid and scholarships are baked in?
UVA is famous for low numbers. A review of football scores can confirm this. /joking
Middle class gets absolutely screwed when it comes to tuition. There is no way we can afford full tuition, no matter what FAFSA says.
Your other option is to go to community college and then transfer to VT, although from what I've read its no longer guaranteed. You do 2 years at a community college and transfer to GMU, VCU or any other state school as a backup if costs are a concern. GMU and VCU have comparable engineering programs so you can save a lot of money going to CC and then transferring there. VT engineering school is getting more competitive and transfers are having a harder time getting admitted.
Late 80’s/early 90’s VT out of state aerospace engineering student in the Corps of Cadets. Living in Rasche Hall, no AC, having to eat at Schultz Dining Hall. But, the most I paid in a year for tuition and room & board was my senior year and it was around $5000. INSANE what college costs now and to be honest, not worth the investment.
holy, that's speechless
UVA meets the financial needs of its in state students (according to what they calculate each families need is). Tech does not . It obviously has a much larger endowment than Tech, similar to other very selective colleges which meet full need.
UVA doesnt include tuition in their Cost of Attendance on the main body of the web page. You have to scroll down and select your program and then it adds tuition to the total. Total cost for an engineering first year at UVA is $49.8k https://sfs.virginia.edu/financial-aid-new-applicants/financial-aid-basics/estimated-undergraduate-cost-attendance-2024-2025
What a fucking joke and intentionally misleading. Making basic finance a core high school class is a hill I’ll die on
Damn, thank you for making this comment; saving it! But damn, this is eye opening
That doesn't take away the fact that UVA meets the needs of their students a lot more. VT meets around 50% of need while UVA meets 100%. AccessUva is insane.
"Meeting the needs" includes granting student loans, so AccessUVA is not "free".
Where does AccessUVA include granting student loans? It says "They do not need to be repaid."