A college’s sticker price tells you little about what your family will pay. The number that matters is net price, the cost after the grants and scholarships a school offers your student. Run each school’s net price calculator before you apply, and count only free money when offers arrive.
At private colleges, the published price is one most students never pay. The National Association of College and University Business Officers found that nine in 10 first-year students at the private nonprofit schools it surveyed got a grant from their school in 2025-26. Those grants added up to about 57 cents of every tuition dollar.
That gap can lead a family to cross off the wrong school. Say a private college lists $80,000 a year and offers your daughter $52,000 in grants, a net price of $28,000. The state university lists $31,000 and offers nothing. The school that looked more than twice as expensive costs $3,000 less each year.
Every college that takes federal student aid and enrolls first-time, full-time undergraduates must offer an online net price calculator. It estimates your cost from what similar students paid the year before. Use it while the list can still change, not after the acceptances arrive.
When offers arrive, read them skeptically. In a 2022 review of offers from 176 colleges, the Government Accountability Office estimated that 91% of all colleges left out the net price or understated it, some by subtracting loans that must be repaid. Loans and work-study help you pay the bill, but neither makes it smaller.
Then price all four years. Aid can change from year to year, and merit awards can come with a grade requirement. Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship, for one, requires a 3.0 GPA at 30, 60, and 90 semester hours. Sticker prices climb as well. Published tuition and fees at private nonprofit colleges rose 4% for 2025-26, College Board reports.
Finally, ask for more. An aid office can revise an offer after a change in your family’s finances, such as a job loss or unreimbursed medical bills. A better offer from a comparable school is worth sending as well. No college has to match it, and some, including MIT, say they won’t, so ask how each office treats one.
Build the list on net price, and let the sticker price decide nothing.
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