When Do You Pay College Costs?
If I had a Top 10 list of frequently-asked questions, this would be on it. When are college costs actually due, and how do you pay them? Is that actually two questions?
Your first college payment is the deposit which is paid when you accept admission, normally on or before May 1. Usually this is a nominal (relative to college costs) amount, typically ranging up to $500. (Waitlisters: this is usually not refundable and you should accept admission somewhere even if you're accepting a waitlist spot elsewhere, so factor two deposits into your budget.)
This year there’s an added complication: some, but by no means all, colleges have pushed acceptance dates back past May 1 due to FAFSA delays. And of those who have given students more time to consider their options, some have moved their acceptance date back to May 15, while others have pushed it out to June 1. Now is a great time to check in with the schools you’ve applied to and find out their acceptance dates so you know how quickly you’ll need to make a decision. Students with multiple potential acceptance dates should do two things:
Rank the colleges you’ve applied to in order of preference so that you can plan around your top choices’ acceptance dates
Get a good sense of your budget sooner rather than later so that when acceptances and aid awards come in, you know what the financial boundaries are
Your normal college costs are then divided between academic terms, though not always equally. Colleges typically send out an estimated statement a month or so before school starts. This will show the estimated total direct-billed costs-- tuition, fees, room and board for on-campus students, and other items the university includes such as health insurance, transit passes, and more. (This is your opportunity to make sure you've waived optional items that you are declining such as campus health insurance if you already have insurance coverage.) Students attending public colleges might see higher costs than in their original financial aid award letters. That's because many public colleges don't release their actual tuition rates until state budgets are finalized in June, so the award letter might include the previous year's tuition. In addition, many colleges charge more for on-campus room and board for the first term than for subsequent terms. If the room and board amount on your statement is higher than your financial aid award, reach out to the school to find out why.
Usually any institutional financial aid will show as "pending." Another "pending" item: additional fees based on the student's specific course selection, whether lab fees, fees for online materials or anything else billed directly by the college; in our experience you might receive bursar statements for such costs periodically over the course of the term. This statement is helpful for figuring out approximately how much you're going to need to pay so that you can start figuring out where it's going to come from-- your 529 or other savings account, loans, out of pocket.
If your student has an outside scholarship, it will be disbursed directly to the school at which point the school will allocate it equally across academic terms and adjust any need-based aid. That means a student with a $3,000 outside scholarship attending a school on quarters will get $1,000 per quarter credited to their bill. Aid adjustments due to outside scholarships often happen at the last minute and can result in either reduced grant aid or loss of work study or subsidized loans, depending on the school, so it's a good idea to reach out and ask how your outside scholarship will affect the rest of the package. Also important to note: any work study in the student's award is there strictly for calculation purposes. The student still needs to find a work study job and then will receive income from that job up to the work study limit. (It is at the discretion of the work study employer whether they continue to employ the student once they've earned the maximum work study amount.)
Loans are also allocated equally across academic terms and disbursed directly to the school. That means if you're taking out the direct student loan as a freshman and attending a school that's on semesters, the school will receive $2,750 to apply to your costs. Only after all school costs are covered is any surplus returned to the student. This often takes a few weeks after the start of the term, which can be difficult for students living off-campus who are using loans to pay for books or room and board, so it's something to plan for.
Most schools require all costs for the term to be paid upfront, and most also offer payment plans. Those plans may or may not have fees associated with them, and those fees can change from year to year. For example, my son's school charges a fee for payment plans for tuition but allows room and board to be paid in three installments without a fee. My daughter's school offered a monthly payment plan at no cost her first year but has charged for it in subsequent years. Often payment plans cost $75-$100 per academic term, which can add $1,000 or more to the cost of college. However, families paying out of pocket from your ongoing income, payment plans cheaper than taking out loans.
Books, computers, etc., are the student's responsibility. My recommendation: wait until after the first class session to buy books, no matter what the nice man in the bookstore tells you. Both my kids have found that the required materials in the syllabus tend to overstate the required materials by a substantial margin. And often the professor offers a low-cost online version of the expensive book-- but you won't learn about that until class meets. (Side note: textbook publishers have wised up to used books and now often integrate online worksheets and materials with single-use codes that require the student to buy a new copy of the book.)
Students living off-campus pay rent and buy groceries on an ongoing basis, needless to say. 529 funds can be used to cover these expenses up to the lesser of actual costs or the school's off-campus living allowance. That means that if your school's off-campus living allowance is $12,000 annually and you spend $13,000 on rent and food, only $12,000 is "qualified" or eligible for 529 withdrawals. Likewise, if you only spent $11,000, only $11,000 is "qualified."
You can choose to have your 529 funds sent directly to the school. However, my recommendation is to withdraw them in your student's name, then pay college costs directly. That way you don't risk having the school confuse a check from your 529 as an outside scholarship. Plus, you probably won't know exactly how much to pay until a couple of days before the payment is due.
A couple of parent hacks: Join the school's Facebook parents page to get suggestions for money-saving strategies specific to your campus. Parents who have already done all this at the same school can be a wealth of information. And, if your student flies to and from school, book Thanksgiving and winter break tickets early. Colleges publish academic calendars showing holidays well in advance so you don't have to wonder when the breaks are.
