George Washington University Raises Tuition to $39,000.

The school already has the dubious distinction of being the most expensive college in America.

And it is about to raise tuition again for the 2007-2008 school year.

This will push the total cost of attendance to $54,000 a year, including room, board, fees, and personal allowances. GW does provide financial aid, but the average need-based package was less than $32,000 for 2006-2007. Assuming the need-based aid package increases dollar-for-dollar with the tuition increase, that's still a shortfall of $20,000 every year before merit aid is accounted for.

The school does promise to hold tuition steady for an enrolled student for five years, and the need-based package is also guaranteed not to fall. However, $80,000 out of pocket strikes me as a lot for a school that ISN'T the best-ranked by most measures.

Does anyone have any insight into the value of GW for the price? I did apply there for undergrad, and was offered a half-tuition package, but it was still far too expensive even then.

It's funny because it's true.

From last week's Carnival of Education:

The best summary of the college application experience EVER.

I laughed a lot.

Now that Blue Monday is well behind us...

(by which I mean January 22 and not the New Order single)

...let's share some cheery news.

1) Kiplinger's released its latest ranking of the 100 Best Values in Public Colleges. UNC-Chapel Hill topped the list for the sixth straight time. The reporters believe that the major increases in public school tuition over the last several years is likely to moderate going forward.

2) Princeton will hold tuition steady for the first time in 40 years. Room and board fees will increase. Overall, the total cost of attendance is about $44,000 a year, while the average annual grant to a first year student on financial aid is $30,000. This could still leave many students with a large debt load, but it is a marked improvement over the past. Hopefully more Ivies and other private schools will look at how Princeton is managing its endowment and follow suit.

And on the personal front...

3) I indulged in some relatively frugal entertainment last night. The auto show was in town, so I stopped by for a visit. Thanks to a coupon, my ticket was only $6. For that $6, I saw:

• A set by a local band that I'd been meaning to check out
• A "magic show" to demonstrate the wonders of flex-fuel vehicles, at which I got free popcorn
• the wacky Ford Airstream concept...CUV, or whatever they're calling not-minivans these days
• the super-duper integrated audio system in the Volvo S80 (would I buy one? Probably never. Would I sit in one and pretend for a little while? Heck yes.)
• a vendor selling off-brand accessories for all types of home and car audio. So I finally found an iPod charger for half off retail!

All told, I think it was pretty good bang for the buck.

This weekend, I'm going to use some coupons from my gifted Entertainment book and try to see another Oscar movie. I'm thinking Last King of Scotland, but it depends on which films are showing nearby.

New Criteria for Ranking Schools Turns U.S. News List on Its Head

The Washington Monthly Offers New Ways to Pick America's Colleges.

Everyone knows about U.S. News' national rankings and Kiplinger's private and public rankings. And nearly everyone can predict which schools are going to be at the top 10 of those lists.

Washington Monthly decided to shake up those assumptions. They built a new model to predict school excellence that asks what the school is doing for the country.

To determine this, they asked:

• How well a school performs as an engine of social mobility. Schools scored based on outreach to lower-income students, measured by exceeding expected percentages of students with Pell Grants given SAT scores and by exceeding expected graduation rates for those Pell Grant students. (Please read the methodology for a better explanation.)
  
• How well it does in fostering scientific and humanistic research. Schools scored based on the total amount of an institution's research spending, the number of PhDs awarded by the university in the sciences and engineering, and the percentage of undergraduate alumni who have gone on to receive a PhD in any subject.
  
• How well it promotes an ethic of service to country. Schools scored based on the percentage of students enrolled in the Army and Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps, the percentage of alumni who are currently serving in the Peace Corps, and the percentage of federal work-study grants devoted to community service projects.
  

Please check out the full ranking. Some of these results might surprise you. If nothing else, applying to less well-known but still competitive schools often means a better aid offer. And applying to these schools might inspire public service, as well.

And if you want still more rankings, visit here.

Ten Ways to Get A's in College

The Washington Post summarizes 10 tips to get A's in college starting with the first day of class.

Keeping a good GPA will both help a student maintain scholarships and qualify for upperclass ones. And that helps reduce loan debt.

As for the tips, some of these are intuitive, but 3, 4, and 9 aren't something that I've heard often. And 5 is something most people don't do, but should.

1. Show up the first day and pay attention, and if you don't like a course, drop it fast and pick another one. This can help you get out of a mismatch between expectations and reality.
   
2. Don't load up on easy courses to increase your supply of A's. Taking an occasional basket-weaver, however, is acceptable. I like to tell people that my school loved the liberal arts so much that we had both Slacker Physics AND Physics for Poets. ("Explain how the impending heat death of the universe makes you feel.")
   
3. Don't shy away from courses with lots of papers. It helps avoid "exam cram" at midterms. Besides, EVERYONE needs to learn how to write well.
   
4. Don't give up if they say the course you want is booked up . Appeal to the professor's vanity, if necessary.
   
5. Use office hours intelligently, and often . This is especially useful when developing a draft of one's paper. Also, the professors with whom you build a rapport are the best resort for recommendation letters later.
   
6. Go to lectures and take notes yourself. Anybody else's notes might leave out important details or even the entire structure of the lecture.
   
7. Use section meetings for more than identifying attractive classmates . In undergrad, I had almost none of these, since our classes were so small. But it can help to talk with a TA if you are confused.
   
8. Find some old exams in the course . A lot of these are simply put on course reserve.
   
9. Before you start work on your paper, do the analysis in your head. Fresh analysis comes from thought experiments, before note-taking and background research even start.
   
10. If you challenge a grade, be careful. Unless the grader really missed something, this is usually wasted effort and a quick way to burn bridges.
    

Happy studying.

Kiplinger's 50 Best Values in Public Colleges

New list has UNC, University of Florida, UVA, William and Mary, and SUNY-Bighamton in the Top 5

Every school in the top 10 shows an average four-year debt load of $16K or less. I'm always suspicious when I see a mean without a median, but this still looks pretty good to me.

This list focuses on academic quality first, and then the annual "sticker price", average "effective price", and the average debt load a student faces after four years.

I would like to read up a bit more on their methodology for determining quality. Average SAT scores tell you something about the class, but certainly not everything you'd want to know before attending.

At any rate, these are all well-regarded schools that give a student a head start in the race to graduate with less debt.