Evaluating the Cost of College

Hi, my name is Jonathan Rhodes, outreach Manager for South Carolina Student Loan Corporation, and I'm here just to help you evaluate the cost of attendance for college.

Some students just want to understand the cost of tuition, which is not the cost of attendance. I'll just give you a quick example. If you're looking at a college,  the cost of tuition is about $15,000 per year, but the cost of attendance may come out to about $25,000 because you have your books and fees, you have transportation, you have medical bills, you have room and board.

So you have a lot of these costs that are associated with the cost of attendance that you have to make sure that you understand. The main thing would be, uh, definitely your books and fees.

That's going to be huge because some colleges don't add that into the cost of tuition. So that may be something additional that you may have to pay for. 

Also, you want to consider what type of devices do I need? Do I need an iPad? Do I need a laptop? You know, of course you'll need that. So there are a lot of costs that are associated with the cost of attendance that you'll definitely have to consider before you actually get started with the process.

Most colleges have a net price calculator to be able to put all of that information together to know exactly based on the cost of tuition, your books and fees, technology fees, and all of that.

This is what I can generally look at when applying for college. So I'll always suggest students to apply for scholarships, and then go on to apply for your FAFSA. 

Once you've completed your FAFSA, then you're going to determine your eligibility. And also with that, based on maybe taking the SAT or the ACT, your GPA, you can be awarded state-funded grants and scholarships. That can actually help you as well. 

So the first thing I would do is scholarships, then FAFSA, and then that will determine whether you're going to apply for your federal loans and or private loans as well.