(The Cheapest Out-of-State Colleges List has been updated for the latest data available in September of 2022.) Back when I was a freshman attending a rather large state university in Austin, Texas, I ran into quite a few students (relatively speaking) from the state of New York. They told me that they were attending college in Texas because our out-of-state tuition was cheaper than their in-state tuition. I only saw them that one year because the following year, the legislature raised out-of-state tuition and Texas was no longer as appealing to New Yorkers as it once was.
Cheapest Out-of-State Colleges in 34 States
With all the pressure on high school students to create a perfect college list, they really aren’t given the opportunity to develop the skills to do so. It’s the sort of situation that most students will do only once. How often can you “practice” deciding which colleges to apply to? It’s not the same as practicing taking the ACT or SAT. How do you learn to create a list of colleges to apply to?
If you want to pay less for college, you need to pay more attention to college statistics. I’m sure many parents and students hip deep in the college admissions process think that they are drowning in college statistics but are still facing the prospect of impossible tuition bills. The problem is that they aren’t paying attention to the right statistics, or at the very least, not considering them in terms of how they affect the cost of going to college.
It’s not just that college is expensive. It is. But rather there’s the unexpected problem in actually being able to answer the basic question, “how much does college cost?” Unless you’re prepared to pay the sticker price, it’s almost impossible for students to know how much they are going to pay for college until they get their financial aid awards. And even those lucky few who aren’t relying on financial aid for college, will still find it difficult to identify college costs and compare different schools. The only thing that can be more difficult to figure out than college costs is probably healthcare prices. Yes, it’s that bad.
Over half of all college students attend schools less than 