College Tuition Project
Southeastern Oklahoma State University is located in Durant, Oklahoma, is a D2 college and is the college that I chose to calculate tuition for because there is a possibility that I may attend there. This happens to be a smaller college compared to the University of Oklahoma and places like that but the bonus of this is the cost of tuition is much less, especially for out of state. My major would be in science, more specifically medical science, and after attending there for my undergrad degree; I would attend post grad school, medical school, and become a medical doctor.
I first plotted my information on a graph, with the cost of tuition as Y and the academic year as X; then calculated my linear equation for the line of best fit. To my surprise this line was pretty close (in my mind) to what the real equation that I found with the calculator. My equation was, y=920.5x+4487 (with all digits equaling dollars), and the calculator’s equation was, y=972.6x+4579.3, so really I was only about fifty dollars off on my slope (the average amount tuition increased (es) over an academic year). The correlation coefficient (CC) equates to how consistently the college increased its tuition each year, and my CC was .94, and I think this is a pretty good CC. The average percent increase for the tuition of Southeastern over the past 10 years has been 10.6%, each year, and I believe it would be much worse if they were a private school. The reason behind this logic is that public colleges receive funding from the government, so when the economy starts to go bad the college just gradually feels it because they still receive funding from the government; however private colleges don’t receive any funding for the government so when the economy nose dives, everyone who funds the college’s operations feels it in their pockets, and therefore cause a very large spike in tuition and other costs. The average tuition increase I’m anticipating during my four years of undergrad is 6%, a number that makes me glad I’m not attending college for a couple more years. The tentative total tuition cost for me to attend this school, as of now, will be $66,945; however this isn’t what I will owe if things stay how they are. In reality I’ll probably pay more than this because the economy doesn’t seem to be getting better anytime soon, so that means all of the prices will most likely rise.
After researching the different types of payback plans and the pros and cons of them I have come to the decision that I will most likely use the “extended fixed” payback plan. In this plan I will pay a fixed amount of $331.56 for 300 months (25 years), coming to a total of $99,468. The reason I chose this plan is I would be attending grad school so I wouldn’t be able to handle a huge monthly payment, so I went with a smaller plan that I can pay off in a big sum once I actually get to my goal of becoming a doctor. My hand calculated amount that I would have to pay was $86,634, but the reason this amount is lower, by a lot, is I didn’t recalculate after making each monthly payment, and this makes it much higher. So after I evaluated all of these things and discussed with my parents the different plans I came to the conclusion of the “Extended Fixed” payment plan. The one hope I’m holding onto is that I will earn a sizeable scholarship that would allow me to owe little to none for tuition during undergrad college, but just in case this is the plan that I would use.
Sources:
