Calculate the Cost of Going Back to School
How to Calculate the Cost of Going Back to School
Many of you are enthusiastic or on the fence about going back to school sometime soon, and Sallie Mae recently launched a free online tool to help estimate the cost of your decision. Their Education Investment Planner was developed to help students better assess their choices when selecting a school and understand the true cost of education.
According to Sallie Mae's press release, the Education Investment Planner is equipped with the following capabilities.
- Estimate the full cost of a college degree: Find out how much four years for a bachelors degree, two years for a masters degree, or other programs will cost at a specific school, including the average growth of tuition over time.
- Build a customized Plan to pay for college through a combination of their own money, federal and state grants, scholarships and, if necessary, federal and private student loans.
- Compare schools: Compare actual costs for approximately 5,500 colleges and universities not only tuition, but also average room and board expenses, fees, books and supplies.
- Determine if they need student loans and, if so, estimate what their monthly payments could be after graduation and project how much a graduate would need to earn to keep payments manageable.
