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Eighteenth most expensive college in US with undergrad tuition at $75,950. Glad I went in the 70's.

The laughable aspect of this in relation ti private schools especially and even more private schools that have a reputation for "wealthy" students and alumni is the reporting on tuition cost.

The "media" (see mostly idiots without a clue) always report on this as if these schools are filled with only extremely wealthy students when in reality there is a whole lot of the media's dream of "wealth redistribution" going on, but they totally ignore it. They ignore it because most of them are too stupid to understand it and even if they went to an expensive private school they felt entitled to do so as a future "do gooder reporter" and thus even the less than wealthy ones are still clueless.

One needs to keep in mind that the tuition mentioned above and for most similar schools to SMU is the "rack rate" tuition and almost no one pays that rate. That is the rate before pell grants (FREE money) and the rates before scholarships offered by the university or other types of no cost financial assistance offered by the university. The very few students that are paying 100% full tuition are the sons and daughters (or whatever they identify as) of the very wealthy and probably even then ones that had just "muh" grades that could not get some type of assistance based on grades or they turned it down because their parents could afford it or it was not offered because of the income of the parents (or in come cases the "trust fund baby".

If those that "reported" on this were remotely honest and not intellectual imbeciles and intellectually bankrupt they would actually report on the average "out of pocket cost" of attending these various universities. We will use everyone's favorite comparison in Texas.....TEXAS just as an example of how things COULD work. Texas does not need to offer a great deal of financial assistance and when they do it will be for very very high academic metrics. So if a student is going there and paying $30,000 for fall and spring living on campus and they are getting zero financial assistance from UT or anyone else well compare that to a POTENTIAL at SMU. That same student at SMU (COULD again COULD) be paying the same or less if they have very good grades. They could get money simply based on the financial situation of their family so if they were go get 50% assistance they would be out of pocket $37,975 for a total of $7,975 over UT.

That is not insignificant for sure, but SMU will offer a much smaller campus, much smaller classes, more interaction with faculty and some of those things will be very important to students. In addition Texas is a relatively low cost public university especially for the overall academic quality and it is extremely hard to get into (not that SMU is remotely easy to get into) so when you compare SMU to other more expensive public schools or going out of state (even with a lot of assistance like Arkansas, Ole' Miss, and others that recruit Texas HS students) well SMU is still competitive for a lot of students.

And again it is those that can actually AFFORD IT and those that have contributed to SMU through their wealth and generosity that make it possible to offer that tuition assistance.....so in other words it is WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION for higher education. But when you generally read reports on things like this from the average idiot with a pen and paper (or a blog now) they make it seem that SMU and others are just bastions of wealthy kids and their parents paying whatever it takes to get a degree and run off after college to a guaranteed job in the family business or with their mass of wealthy connections. But the reality is much different.

I know darn well that the sticker price isn't necessarily the cost the student pays. I myself paid far less than the sticker price in the late '90's and picked SMU over arguably better schools because of the financial aid they offered.

But I'll say this - I've got the GI Bill due to carrying a machine gun in Iraq, and that only offers $25k/year for private schools for tuition. It would be EXTREMELY difficult to pay for the tuition (the R&B is provided through a stipend) with that 25k, and if that's the case then it's too expensive.

I get what rodrod5 is saying, but the "rack rate" at SMU is being compared to the "rack rate" at all other types of institutions. I went to SMU for all of my graduate stuff specifically because of full ride scholarships/fellowships I was granted. I think this is just a bit of a messaging problem more than anything. Expensive schools, in my experience working in academia, are also the ones with the most opportunities for receiving financial aid. My older brother went to NYU (also $74k a year) also because of the plentiful financial aid they offer. Any kid who sees the ticket price at a private school and is immediately turned off is NOT being counseled appropriately about the reality of the opportunities.

SMU says that 28% of all students do not receive financial aid.
I know a guy whose son had a 31 ACT and 3.5 GPA but rejected. His dad would have gladly paid full price but he’s at a OOS Big 10 school.

EastStang wrote: Glad I went in the 70's.

Me, too. I think SMU cost me (and my parents) $1,500 in the early 70's. I had to pay for room & board but went the dorm advisor route one year, fraternity house manager another year and lived off campus for $50/month senior year so it was pretty easy to earn what I needed during the summer. I offered to send my son to SMU as he decided to go AFROTC which would have reduced our cost but glad he decided to stay closer to home and attend Clemson. That turned out to be a great experience for him and his younger sister decided to follow him there, much like I had decided to follow my older brother to SMU (and then my younger brother later followed both of us and also attended SMU).

No idea what my tuition was in the mid to late 80’s, but we did get a significant discount due to the fact that my father was an adjunct in the law school.

ponyboy wrote:No idea what my tuition was in the mid to late 80’s, but we did get a significant discount due to the fact that my father was an adjunct in the law school.

I thought for years that one of the best benefits of being an employee was "free" tuition for your children. Don't know if they still offer that.

Yeah, it may have been free at the time.

I got free tuition/books because my dad was a professor at the law school. He had died when I was in 5th grade but SMU was kind enough to honor this. Always grateful for this.

Stanford used to have free tuition exchange with the Ivy League, but they dropped it because many more kids were coming from the Ivies than going there. Then they changed it to half of Stanford tuition wherever you go as so many did not get into Stanford.

Terry Webster wrote:I got free tuition/books because my dad was a professor at the law school. He had died when I was in 5th grade but SMU was kind enough to honor this. Always grateful for this.

Oh wow! Thats nice. Was/Is this a university policy, or it was a one off, how come?

That is really cool that they did that, Terry. What year did he pass? I’ll have to ask Dad if they crossed paths. He taught from like 1970 to 2000, something like that.

I took a class in law school in which your your dad was the professor