Repeat After Me: “Staying in state is NOT always cheaper!!!”
As an Independent Educational Consultant (IEC) working as a College Counselor, I can’t begin to tell you how hard it is for me to hear, time after time “that it’s cheaper for a student to stay in state to attend college.” In my home state of Georgia, I have heard this statement too many times to count from Clients, friends, and family often due to the lottery-funded HOPE and Zell Miller Scholarships. It is important to note that both these scholarships provide funds designated for tuition only and NOT room and board which can run between $7,000.00 and $15,000.00 for the state of Georgia institutions.
Bottom line, staying in state for college is NOT always cheaper, especially for high achieving students from low to middle income households including my own son who attended a need-blind college[1] out of state and graduated debt-free! Therefore, with the understanding that seeing is believing, I am sharing a real-life scenario of a previous CFS student below. In 11+ years in business, we have routinely seen similar results with our students.
For Ivy League Institutions, parents making $65,000.00 or less are expected to contribute $0.00!! Yes, zero!!! In addition, “Ninety percent of American families would pay the same or less to send their children to an Ivy League school as a state school.”[2] Recently, Union College, a small, highly selective college in Schenectady, NY – the first liberal arts institution to offer an engineering degree publicized that “…it [Union College] is announcing a new effort to recruit from a pool that officials at Union say gets lost in the struggle of colleges to keep up with student demand: students from families with income of up to $250,000 who have an expected family contribution of $90,000 or less. Union is committed to giving each of the students who come from these families at least $20,000 in scholarship aid.”[3]
If you want or need to see outcomes like these for your son or daughter, contact us.
[1] of or denoting a college admissions policy in which applicants are judged solely on their merits, irrespective of their ability to pay for tuition
[2] Harvard College
[3] https://www.insidehighered.com/print/admissions/article/2019/10/07/union-college-starts-programs-help-students-families-income-250000
| School | Tuition, Room, and Board | GA HOPE Scholarship | School Merit Aid | School Grant Aid | Amount Due |
| Babson College | $69,266.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $58,000.00 | $11,266.00 |
| Rhodes College | $60,830.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $51,700.00 | $9,130.00 |
| Georgetown University | $76,030.00 | $0.00 | $66,085.00 | $0.00 | $9,945.00 |
| University of Alabama | $55,124.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $55,124.00 |
| University of Georgia | $21,878.00 | $7,440.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $14,438.00 |
| University of Miami | $64,716.00 | $0.00 | $10,000.00 | $44,000.00 | $10,716.00 |
Exhibit A, Georgia Resident, Decision: Georgetown University
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