Data from TuitionScan
The $90,000 College That Costs Less Than a State School.
In 20 of 35 states, a private college with a $60,000+ sticker charged middle-income families less than the state's typical public college.
The University of Chicago lists a cost of attendance of $90,360 a year. In the latest federal data, students from families earning $48,000 to $75,000 who received aid there paid an average of $226. The typical public college in Illinois charged the same families $8,678.
That is not a quirk of one school. We ran the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard figures behind TuitionScan, Veraino’s college-cost site, across every college with at least 500 undergraduates. For middle-income families, the sticker price was often the worst possible guide to what a school actually cost.
26 of 101private colleges with an $80,000+ sticker charged $48k–75k families less than the median U.S. public college ($10,422).
20 of 35states where a $60,000+ private college undercut the state’s own median public college for those families.
$49,992median net price at those $80,000+ colleges for families earning over $110,000.
Sticker price and net price are two different numbers
The sticker, or cost of attendance, is a college’s full published price for a year: tuition, fees, housing, food, books and living costs. Net price is what aided students actually paid after grants and scholarships, averaged by family income. Loans are not subtracted, because they are repaid.
Across the 2,472 colleges in our set with both figures for middle-income families, the median sticker and the median net price for a $48k–75k family looked like this:
- Public colleges (1,459): sticker $17,934, net price $10,422.
- Private nonprofit colleges (901): sticker $52,019, net price $20,262.
- For-profit colleges (112): sticker $33,587, net price $28,059.
On average, then, public colleges are still the cheaper option. But the private average hides a very wide spread, and at the top of the sticker range the discounts get deep enough to flip the comparison entirely.
The most expensive-looking college in your state may not be
For each state, we took the private nonprofit college with a sticker of $60,000 or more that charged $48k–75k families the least, and set it against the median public college in the same state. In 20 of the 35 states that have such a college, the private school came in lower.
| State | Private college | Sticker | Net, $48k–75k | State public median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CA | California Institute of Technology | $86,886 | $431 | $9,389 |
| CT | Wesleyan University | $89,020 | $6,175 | $15,934 |
| IA | Grinnell College | $83,440 | $9,669 | $11,662 |
| IL | University of Chicago | $90,360 | $226 | $8,678 |
| MA | Williams College | $84,860 | −$1,978 | $9,540 |
| MD | Johns Hopkins University | $85,947 | $4,179 | $12,198 |
| ME | Colby College | $85,420 | $3,666 | $9,273 |
| MN | Carleton College | $84,893 | $9,680 | $12,000 |
| MO | Washington University in St. Louis | $88,488 | $5,578 | $12,613 |
| NC | Duke University | $87,072 | $5,706 | $8,574 |
| NH | Dartmouth College | $87,793 | $2,695 | $20,311 |
| NJ | Princeton University | $84,040 | $1,217 | $11,770 |
| NY | Columbia University | $89,472 | $5,866 | $10,742 |
| OK | University of Tulsa | $64,459 | $10,871 | $11,970 |
| PA | University of Pennsylvania | $89,028 | $10,439 | $15,759 |
| RI | Brown University | $87,648 | $5,858 | $8,701 |
| SC | Wofford College | $72,441 | $10,830 | $11,582 |
| TN | Vanderbilt University | $89,590 | $4,498 | $8,965 |
| TX | Rice University | $79,788 | $3,217 | $9,295 |
| VA | Washington and Lee University | $87,000 | $4,497 | $8,639 |
College Scorecard, 2024 reporting year. Net price is the average for aided first-time, full-time students in the $48,001–$75,000 family-income band; public figures are in-state. “State public median” includes two-year colleges. A negative net price means grants exceeded the full cost of attendance on average.
In the other 15 states, and in D.C., the gap ran the other way, sometimes by a lot. In Mississippi and Nebraska, the lowest-cost $60,000+ private college still charged middle-income families more than $23,000, well above the state’s public median.
What the sticker still tells you
The discounts are mostly need-based, so they shrink as income rises. At the 101 private colleges with an $80,000+ sticker, the median net price for families earning over $110,000 was $49,992, against $16,861 for $48k–75k families at the same schools. For a higher-income family, the sticker is much closer to a real price.
The other place the sticker holds up is at for-profit colleges. At 67 of the 112 in our set, middle-income families paid at least 80% of the sticker price. Among the 2,360 public and nonprofit colleges, that happened at 77.
What this data does not tell you
- Whether you can get in. Many colleges in the table are highly selective. A low net price is only useful at a school that admits you.
- Your own price. These are averages for aided students in an income band, not a quote. Assets, family size and each college’s own aid formula move the number, and some schools also use the CSS Profile. Each college’s own net price calculator gives a personal estimate.
- This year’s price. Federal cost data runs about two years behind, and colleges change their aid policies from year to year.
How we ran the numbers
Figures come from the College Scorecard’s 2024 reporting year, as loaded into TuitionScan. We kept colleges with at least 500 undergraduates, since averages at very small schools rest on too few students to compare. “Middle income” is the federal $48,001–$75,000 band. Colleges missing a net price for that band were left out rather than estimated. Every school named above has its own TuitionScan page with the full income-band breakdown, linked from the table.