ANYWAY. This promotional blog post is for the college side of things (which, obviously, is why it is making an appearance in my To College and Beyond blog). At this point, I don't honestly remember what I've written about textbooks and whatnot, but I'm going to do a little breakdown here of what my own personal tuition has looked like in the past compared to how it is now, along with what it could be (you'll see what I mean as we continue through the post).
2014-2015 Academic School Year Tuition at South Dakota State University:
If you would like to, for more clarification, refer to one of my previous posts, you will notice that I did not take the normal Freshman's workload my first year (2014-2015). I brought with me about 25 credits (including all english (6 credits), speech (3), math (3), a LOT of Spanish (12)) in with me to school. All except for math and speech were earned through some means during high school, whereas math and speech I took over the summer before college began at a community college in my hometown. Because the community college was in my county, I paid about $75 per credit hour, so that saved me quite a bit of money beforehand. Overall, I probably paid about $550 for the 24 hours I already had going into my Freshman year. That being said, here's what I paid August 2014 - May 2015.
Semester 1:
| 2014FA | 08/25/14 | SGAF5 | S-General Activity Fee FY15 | 420.00 | ||
| 2014FA | 08/25/14 | SLGEO | S-Lab Fee Geography | 56.40 | ||
| 2014FA | 08/25/14 | TUNRS | Tuition UG NonRes SDSU | 3,123.00 | ||
| 2014FA | 08/25/14 | USF5R | Uni Support Fee FY15 MSU | 1,699.50 | ||
| Subtotal Current Registration Charges | 5,298.90 | |||||
| Current Other Charges | ||||||
| 2014FA | 08/25/14 | SFSRD | S-Food Plan Silver Flex Def | 1,511.80 | ||
| 2014FA | 08/25/14 | SHBRW | S-Residence Hall Brown | 1,607.20 | ||
| Subtotal Current Other Charges | 3,119.00 | |||||
| TOTAL CURRENT CHARGES | 8,417.90 | |||||
I paid $56.40 for my required science lab.
I paid $3,123 for out-of-state tuition (meaning what I paid for 15 credits worth of classes)
I paid $1,699.50 for, honestly, I have no idea what. More tuition? I don't know. But I had to pay it, so I did.
In addition to all of that (subtotal $5,298.90), I had to pay for at least $1,511.80 (the lowest amount I could purchase at the time) for meal plan that I could use at any food location on campus (the union, the cafeteria, the dairy bar, etc.).
I then also had to pay $1,607.20 for my dorm room in the absolute CHEAPEST hall on campus.
Subtotal for room-and-board and meal plan: $3,119.
Pre-total for Semester 1: $8,417.90. Now throw in a $500-per-semester scholarship:
| SR261 | Yellow & Blue Schl | 2014FA | A | 500.00 |
| Total | 500.00 |
Official total for semester 1: $7,917.90
THIS IS WITHOUT TEXTBOOKS. I can't honestly tell you how much I did end up paying for textbooks. But I CAN tell you that it was roughly $450 because I bought most, if not all, of them my first semester through the university bookstore.
Semester 2:
| CURRENT CHARGES (01/12/15 through 05/08/15) | ||||||
| Current Registration Charges | ||||||
| 2015SP | 01/12/15 | SGAF5 | S-General Activity Fee FY15 | 392.00 | ||
| 2015SP | 01/12/15 | SSUIN | Tuition UG SS Internet | 938.70 | ||
| 2015SP | 01/12/15 | TUNRS | Tuition UG NonRes SDSU | 2,914.80 | ||
| 2015SP | 01/12/15 | USF5R | Uni Support Fee FY15 MSU | 1,586.20 | ||
| Subtotal Current Registration Charges | 5,831.70 | |||||
| Current Other Charges | ||||||
| 2015SP | 1/12/15 | SFBFX | S-Food Plan Bronze Flex | 1,325.80 | ||
| 2015SP | 01/12/15 | SHBRW | S-Residence Hall Brown | 1,607.20 | ||
| Subtotal Current Other Charges | 3,119.00 | |||||
| TOTAL CURRENT CHARGES | 8,764.70 | |||||
Here we go. I paid:
$392 for general activity fees
$938.70 for Internet? They nickel and dime ya.
$2,914.80 for out-of-state tuition.
$1,586.20 for another something that I have no idea what exactly it went toward.
Subtotal: $5,831.70
In addition to that, I paid:
$1,325.80 for meal plan -- I was able to downgrade my meal plan, but I still found myself with WAY more money than I needed and had to buy random junk from the C-store (on-campus convenience store). Let's just say I won't need to buy new razors/razor heads for another year.
$1,607.20 for my dorm room.
Pre-totale for semester 2: $8,764.70
After $500 scholarship: $8,264.70
Against, THIS IS BEFORE TEXTBOOKS! We're going to assume I paid $400 for textbooks second semester. This is using Amazon in addition to the bookstore.
EVERYTHING CONSIDERED -- I paid a whopping total of $17,032.60 for my first year of college, not including what I paid the summer before OR the summer after. With the summer before and all the credits I brought in, it would calculate out to be about $17,582.60.
Now, this summer I took two online classes through SDSU. I didn't pay for anything except for the tuition itself.
| Current Registration Charges | ||||||
| 2015SU | 05/11/15 | SSUIN | Tuition UG SS Internet | 1,951.50 | ||
| Subtotal Current Registration Charges | 1,951.50 | |||||
| Current Other Charges | 0.00 | |||||
Pretty straightforward, I had to pay $1,951.50 for TWO summer classes (about 6 credits). Adding THAT to my first year's tuition, I've already paid $19,534.10. Add in the amount of money I had to pay for textbooks (I actually didn't have traditional textbooks this summer luckily, I just had to spend about $20 on two short novels for my Spanish class), that brings it up to $19,554.10.
I HAVE SPENT JUST UNDER $20,000 ON MY FIRST YEAR ALONE AT A UNIVERSITY THAT IS ONLY A MIDDLE OF THE ROAD INSTITUTION. THIS ISN'T EVEN A TOP NAME SCHOOL.
Now, for the good stuff:
I'm living off campus this year, so that takes out room-and-board AND a meal plan (although I'm still paying probably more than I should for that, it's not coming out of my college fund. I will make a separate post about what my personal expenses for off-campus living and share it back here in a little while).
Semester 3:
| 2015FA | 08/24/15 | SGAF6 | S-General Activity Fee FY16 | 508.50 | ||
| 2015FA | 08/24/15 | SLINS | S-Liability Insur | 5.00 | ||
| 2015FA | 08/24/15 | SPFMU | S-Music Course Fee | 15.00 | ||
| 2015FA | 08/24/15 | SPFPY | S-PHYSICS Course Fee | 240.00 | ||
| 2015FA | 08/24/15 | TUNRS | Tuition UG NonRes SDSU | 3,255.75 | ||
| 2015FA | 08/24/15 | USF6R | Uni Support Fee FY16 MSU | 1,761.75 | ||
| Subtotal Current Registration Charges | 5,786.00 | |||||
$508.50 for general activity fees (oh, how we all love inflation)
$5.00 for liability. LIABILITY.
$15.00 for the music I'm taking -- that's a new fee that wasn't there last year. Still, $15.00 isn't too much of a hardship.
$240 for the Astronomy (physics) class I'll be taking, most likely for lab expenses. Note that all science labs cost extra even though they're required. What fun.
$3,255.75 of out-of-state tuition.
$1764.75 of something-or-another.
Somewhere in these numbers DOES include a ~$165 parking permit that allows me to park in certain lots on campus.
Pre-total before scholarship for Semester 3: $5,786.
After $500 scholarship: $5,286. DO CHECK TO SEE, IF YOU WILL RECEIVE A SCHOLARSHIP, IF YOU NEED TO RENEW IT EVERY YEAR!!! I ALMOST DIDN'T RECEIVE MINE BECAUSE I WASN'T AWARE IT NEEDED TO BE RENEWED YEARLY.
NOW -- here's where my little promotion kicks in:
If I had bought my textbooks from either the university bookstore or Amazon alone, I would've spent roughly $400, as I did last year. DO. NOT. DO. THIS. Do yourself a favor and check every possible alternative, or better yet:
GO TO SLUGBOOKS.COM
I used slugbooks.com tonight to order my textbooks and, thanks to this wonderful website and especially thanks to Abebooks.com, I was able to cut that down to $233! So, instead of my grand total of tuition being all the way up to $25,220.10, it's only $25,053.10. Now, I know in the big scheme of things it doesn't look like much, but if you total it out over four years, if you save about $200 per semester, so up to about $400 a year (depending on if you take summer classes or not, this case assuming not), that's up to $1,600 you save yourself. For the people who'll be paying $50,000 a year, $1,600 is nothing. But for someone like me who is absolutely beside themselves for having spent just over $25,000 in a year and a half of college, most likely to double that in another year and a half, though still little, $1,600 means I'll be that much less in debt when I graduate. Luckily, my parents were wise enough and I fortunate enough to save about "3-years of in-state tuition" for me. However, I'm attending a university that is about equal to or even slightly cheaper than in-state tuition, so... I might be able to graduate with less that $10,000 in debt! Which would be fantastic. I don't like the thought of not having money. Or owe-ing people. Especially when "people" means the government.
Anyway. That's that. So.
Enjoy.
