I prefer debt free, too. Unfortunately, state schools don't offer what most these schools do: the SLAC experience and name recognition. Worth the extra cash.

How much aid do most of those give, on average, though? Lots of private schools really take down their total tuition based on aid provided.

I went tuition free in-state due to our lottery's scholarships, and mostly tuition free in graduate school. I still owe a lot, though, from various living expenses that went above and beyond what my jobs would pay for the 10 years that I was in college. People should never take for granted parents that can help you at all with your college expenses, because that makes a huge difference.

Is this undergrad? Hopkins is a med school, that could account for the cost.

I'm surprised the 7 sisters are more expensive than the ivies.

Sucks for those super seniors.

Out-of-state Tuition + room/board at U of Michigan is about $48,000, too. And that's a Public University.

All I have to say is THANK GOD for Georgia's HOPE scholarship. I attended the University of Georgia for 4 years and tuition cost my family not one red cent.

CUNY ftw! 2k a semester, thanks!

I graduated from CMC (#15) in 01 - the financial aid was pretty good - lots of work study, grants, scholarships and loans. I'm almost done with my last student loan, but in no hurry to pay it down. It's a school offered interest free loan and we were very happy for it.

@fizzyg: The University of Chicago Odyssey Project covers nearly all of the costs for families making less than $60,000/year - the out-of-pocket expenses for a student's family come out to $1980.

For families making $60,000 - 75,000 a year, it's $1980 plus an annual loan of $3000.

More information here.

When will these lists start taking into consideration that GWU has fixed tuition?! Yes, we are #1 or #2 (depending on the year) most expensive school for incoming freshmen, but they pay THE SAME AMOUNT FOR 4 YEARS! I'm in my 5th year now after taking a leave of absence, and I'm still paying under $50K because I was in the first class when fixed tuition got introduced.

No thanks, I prefer my in-state tuition and debt-free at 25 method of matriculation.

Yea me too. But for me, college was just a formality. For some people, the more famous colleges help their careers. Plus I had to pay for my own college, so I wouldn't have had the choice anyway to go to one of those colleges anyway

Well, it all depends on what program you are going into. Programs like engineering cost double sometimes than normal programs such as life science. I am paying about $5200 for 2 semesters. Room will cost probably another 5k for 2 semesters. you can basically get your degree for for the price of 1 year at those universities!

@BytheSea: JHU offers both graduate and undergrad degrees. It has campuses all over Baltimore-DC corridor.

@Bladefist: It's not what college you got, but who goes to that school with you. GTown, GWU, and NYU are full of celebrity off-springs and people with strong leadership potential.

Wow! UT Austin costs *half* of what Bard College costs.

What's scarier is realizing that these places cost about 25% less about 5 years ago. But it's true about aid, I went to one of these and yearly bills were only about 15-20K. But then again only about 40% of the students going there were on aid...

Yep, the schools with big endowments (rich private colleges) are often VERY generous with financial aid. I made my daughter apply to Bowdoin last year, even though she wasn't very interested in it, because I'd read that it gave the most generous aid packages! She's now at Syracuse, her first choice, and we are thankful for the grants and loans that make this possible. I'm actually surprised Syracuse isn't in that list; it ain't cheap.

Price has little to do with money actually spent. Private schools have much better aid opportunities, because of their endowments. In public schools nearly everyone pays full price, but in private schools only those who are well off end up paying full price.

@Bladefist:

agreed, all you learn in college is networking...everything else you could just as easily learn from a book. I went to one of these expensive and well know colleges...my job out of college is making me as much as a lot of people make at age 35 (im 22) and i got the job solely based on the fact I had a name of my school on my resume. you pay for what you get.

Correction:

It's not "George Washington University," it's "The George Washington University." The "the" is apparently very important to them.

@BytheSea: This is undergrad... med school would be a billion times more. (Exaggeration)

I don't think there are any Ivies on the list.... unless my reading skills are failing me. It's early.

These are all great schools, but it's funny how if you tell someone you went to Princeton/Duke/Yale they have a certain image of your financial situation, but if you say Frankling & Marshall or Carnegie Mellon they might think something else entirely. Without much basis in reality.

I teach at NYU. A couple years ago I figured that for NYU tuition, a typical undergrad could go out and spend $100-150 an hour, hire experts in their course matter for the same amount of class time, and spend about the same as NYU published tuition. Instead of sitting with 30 others in Freshmen Spanish, you could have one-on-one private instruction. What is sad is that so many universities - private and public - are using undergrad tuition to subsidize the rest of the university. At the same time, college students are much more demanding and expect nicer buildings, nicer dorm rooms, a wider course schedule (which costs money), customized degrees (which costs money) and lots of amenities that college students didn't expect 20 years ago. I know plenty of undergrad liberal arts students that are going to graduate with $70K - $100K in student loan debt. An NYU degree may be more prestigious than SUNY-Albany but prestige doesn't usually pay the bills. And when you're 26 years old, living in your parent's basement, and writing $1000 checks to the student loan agency, you may wish you'd taken a cheaper route.

@oneandone: Quick correction - not implying that Duke is an ivy, just that it's often seen as a fancy school on par w the princetons and yales. Off for coffee now...

@ravensfire: So we should be referring to it as TGWU instead of GWU or even GW?

i'm kinda shocked my school isn't on there. i reckon we're close to that $50k mark. tuition this year was $31,100, plus fees and other bs. oh, art school in nyc. how i love thee.

[ps, due to my school's financial aid, i'll only be paying $5k out of pocket this year. score!]

The irony is that the ease of availability of student loans is probably what drove a significant portion of the insane tuition increases these days.

On the same topic, I also think that cost effectiveness of such loans is being swept under the rug by academia. Is it really a smart thing to be encouraging students to go into $100k-$200k of debt to get a journalism degree?

It's crazy how much the price has increased in the last few years. I graduated from Rice University in '06 and when I while I was there, the tuition plus room and board was in the $26,000 to $30,000 range and indexed to inflation. That having been said, for those going to a high-end private school, it's like buying a car, very few people pay the sticker price. Oh well, now that I'm working on a Ph.D in chemistry I get paid to go to school.

Oh Hopkins. That fancy new dorm for which you spent two years jackhammering right outside of my window is really paying for itself, I guess.

here in Maine, Colby & Bowdoin let Maine students attend for free/scholarship $$

@BytheSea: You can indeed go to Johns Hopkins for an undergraduate degree.

@Wally East: I have one. It's in literature. It's as useless as it would be from anywhere else.

@ravensfire: It's actually The Johns Hopkins University as well. God, sometimes I hate myself.

@televisionarie: Yeah but on the other hand you can actually drive through east Baltimore now without being shot at more than once.

Even more amazing, there are parts of east Baltimore that you can walk through now.

For those that care, I've compiled the Ivy League:
Brown (71st $46,950)
Columbia (56th $47,450)
Cornell (31st $48,144)
Dartmouth (51st $47,694)
Harvard (not in the top 100)
Princeton (84th $45,695)
Yale (82nd $46,000)

My poor parents put me though the 52nd most expensive school in the country. And I didn't even like it!

@theblackdog: It's GWU or GW, but The George Washington University

The GA HOPE tuition thing has transformed Athens GA. Gone are the little independent cafes and restaurants, replaced by condos and parking spaces for all the kids new cars.

Parents don't have to pay tuition if they maintain a "B" average. Perks follow.

I dunno, I miss my old Athens, but then again, time marches on.

@johnfrombrooklyn:

True, but for certain professions, like Psychology, the school you attend for your undergrad work pretty much dictates your options for grad school/Ph.D. programs. If you want to get into a very good school for graduate work, you pretty much need to attend a very good (and expensive) undergrad program that offers all these opportunities.

I'm going to have to agree with pretty much everyone here. I went to Illinois State University, graduated with a degree in Computer Science, debt free. I turned 24 yesterday and I own my own house and my own (new) car. I get through life with no (financial) assistance from my parents.

Meanwhile, some of my coworkers went to some of these crazy expensive schools and are still living with (and financially dependent on) their parents because they have $100,000 in student loans to pay off. Of course we all ended up at the same job for the same company, so you have to wonder what advantage they had from going to a fancy school?

Man, Brandeis has slipped. In the late eighties, we vied with Tufts and Sarah Lawrence for top honors.

The problem is that often, the name of the school on your degree completely dictates your options for post-graduate work. Very few quality universities accept grad students with a degree from Bob's Community College.

Looks like now is a good time to start telling the kid she'll get out of it what she puts into it.

@ManiacDan: Can't forget the Ivy of the Midwest, Notre Dame: $49,030 for 2008/2009.

They have 160,000+ of my dollars (and the fed.gov's, and my bank's). Go Irish!

@zigziggityzoo: In-state tuition (which includes mandatory fees, etc) plus room & board at UMass was up to about $23,000 / year by the time I was a senior. I graduated more than five years ago so I'm guessing it's even worse now.

Too bad state systems really aren't the answer, either.

@AtwoodBullfinch: This completely depends on what you're studying. While getting a job is based on who you know (and your skills), I don't think it's possible to learn to be a good graphic designer, or, say, a writer, from a book.

@plamoni: Cost does not equal quality. My ex went to a pretty lame school that cost quite a bit (in the low $30k range a few years back) and in that case, I'd totally agree with you. That was a total waste of money to avoid going to a state school.

However, if you go to a school like MIT, CalTech, etc... then you'll see quite a difference in your earning potential and job opportunities both right out of college and a few years down the road. You did a good job in not racking up a ridiculous amount of debt for a stock 4-year CS degree, but that doesn't mean that everyone who spent some money getting theirs made a mistake.

They might not be debt free at 24, but by 30 or 35 they might be, plus they might be seriously out-earning you just because the school on their resume gets that sort of recognition. That's not a hard and fast rule by any means, but it's something to consider when making decisions about undergrad and graduate studies. It may not be "fair" but it's a legitimate way to stack the deck in your favor if you can (assuming you can get in and finish at one of those top tier schools) and it's usually not hard to figure out what the best (not necessarily most expensive) schools in any give field are.

conn college: where rich kids from NYC who can't get into a quality school have gone since 1911.

i'm somewhat surprised one of the diploma mills didn't make the list (particularly johnson and wales) - way to stay under the radar.

@ManiacDan: There are eight Ivy League schools. Penn is listed right before Cornell on the list.

wow, thats over 5 times my tuition. I pay 8 grand tops, but technically i'm not paying, mommy and daddy are paying... Being the oldest has its benefits.

hahaha. i go to school in scandinavia for under 100usd a semester! plus i get approximately a 6000usd stipend for passing my classes each semester!