Financial Aid Series: How Much Does the UA Cost? - YouTube

Hello and welcome to our series from the University of Arizona FAQ

Financial Aid Series. My name is Stephanie Basij and I'm the Director

of Recruitment at the University of Arizona and I am so excited to be joined

with Rebekah Salcedo our Director for the Office of Scholarships and Financial

Aid. Rebekah, thank you for joining us. My pleasure Stefanie, thank you. Our

series is titled "How much does the U of A cost?" And what we want to do is answer

some of the frequently asked questions about how students and families can

determine and plan for the cost of college at the University of Arizona. So,

today we're going to dive into some of the tools that we have available to students

and families to plan for their attendance at the University of Arizona.

So, Rebekah can you share a little bit about how a student and a family can

look at determining the cost of attendance at the University of Arizona

and the factors that go into that? Absolutely!

The cost of attendance from a financial aid perspective is a little bit more

broad than some families might be thinking of. Because we want to make sure

that we're considering all the costs of a student's education. Which could

include both direct costs, which are cost that a student will get a bill for from

the University, and indirect costs, which aren't items that the student would

necessarily get a bill for, but are items that students need to think about and

plan for in order to be a successful student at U of A. And so, on our web page

we have a link to this presentation to our webpage that will

direct students to the cost of attendance page. The cost of attendance

is updated annually as we get new numbers and we update it in several ways.

When we survey our students every couple of years to ask them about their

expenses, we also keep an eye on the Consumer Price Index to determine that

the estimates that we have are reasonable decision costs, and then for

the direct cost from the institution we use averages that are most suitable to what

more students pay. So, in that research how do you break down the

categories for cost for students? Sure, Absolutely! So, our cost of attendance is

broken down into several categories. There's tuition,

and in that we usually include mandatory fees as well that students might

need to cover, we have room and board and we have averages

that are specific to either living on campus or off campus or even being a

commuter for students who are considering staying

with their parents, our Tucson students. We have books and supplies. Again,

very much an average. We do recommend that students buy their books from our U

of A bookstore, but the amount that they could pay could vary so that is an

estimate. There's travel cost. So, that could either be transportation to or

from school, it could be a bus pass, a parking permit, and so those are cost

students can think about. Miscellaneous is things like laundry, deodorants,

contact lenses, little expenses that will come up that students need to cover

while they're a student. And then we have loan fees, there are loan fees for students who are

thinking of borrowing loans and there could be a fee that we want to

keep into consideration. And we found that the majority of

students take usually at least one iCourse while they're at U of A and so we

include that iCourse fee so that's covered as well. And the iCourse fee is

for an online course? Correct! Wonderful! So then how does the student

figure out what the total price would be depending on the factors that they

personally have? Right, so in addition to the award letter which we'll be talking

about in another video series. Students who haven't yet applied or just curious

and exploring can look at our net price calculator. The Net Price Calculator is a

great tool for students not only to find about their costs, but the different

types of financial aid that they might be eligible for. And so we do recommend

that especially students who haven't gotten an award letter yet, try out that

Net Price Calculator. They enter in their grades, and their test scores, and we will

show them both the scholarship information that they might be eligible

for and their financial aid information, as well as some cost. Wonderful! And is

that tool for incoming freshman and transfer students? Correct! We do have two

separate net price calculators. One is specific to incoming

freshmen students and then the other one is specific to

transfer students. Wonderful! Absolutely! So, you mentioned tuition as a part of one of

those categories. Right. So how does the University

of Arizona go about setting their tuition and what does that look like? So,

the University of Arizona's tuition is set by the Arizona Board of Regents. And

so, when we first send students an award letter it will have the estimated

tuition which we'll update later. But one of the greatest things for especially

our incoming freshmen is that we have a guarantee tuition rate which is good for

four years, eight semesters. In which their tuition and mandatory fees stay

exactly the same and so they won't be increased for those four years, eight

semesters. And that really helps families with planning. Wonderful! And are there other

sources of information that families should investigate when they're looking

at the University of Arizona? Absolutely! So, the financial aid webpage is the

best source of information. We have information about the different types of

aid that are available for students, we have again the Cost of Attendance page

is there, we also have forms that students might need to access to find out, and

also we have an FAQ section. So, families and students should for sure

check out that financial aid webpage and feel free to contact our office if they

have any questions. Wonderful! And the Office of Admissions also has a great

webpage for students to get more information if they still haven't

applied yet, want to apply, want to learn how to visit our campus, or contact us

via email or phone. So, that's a great way for students to connect while they're

doing their search process and for those students who have been admitted. Well

thank you Rebekah for joining us today and thank you all for watching and we

hope that you continue to watch the rest of the videos in our FAQ series.