Want to save money on college costs? Are you or someone in your family already attending college or about to start the process? Below is a secret that universities don't want you to know.
We all have heard about transferring from one university to another, right? That situation is a common occurrence. Universities and colleges WANT transfer students to come to their school. Universities even have separate recruiting and admissions goals for attracting transfer students. So, a person can save money on their overall tuition by attending a community college for example, that has lower priced tuition, but has the courses that transfer and count just like courses from the institution that the person is 'transferring' to. That scenario however, isn't the secret.
This is. Did you know that you can attend two institutions at the same time? Yep, what this means is that a student can start at the University of ABC and register for say two or three courses, and then concurrently enroll in a community college and take distance-based (online) courses for the fourth and/or fifth course/s, thus being enrolled at the four-year institution and taking advantage of the perks of starting at that school (i.e., first-year student activities, socializing, acclimating to the campus and institution, and many others), but only participating in a limited number of courses at the higher tuition rate (four-year schools are typically higher priced). During this time, transferable courses are being taken at a lower price point and after finishing those courses, they can be transferred to the four-year school to be added to the program plan. As time goes on and with the right planning, a minimum number of courses/credits that is typically referred to as the residency requirement at the four-year school would be met and then all other courses could be taken at a different institution including a four-year institution as well.
When it comes down to it, for the most-part, an art course is an art course and a music course is a music course, so for the general education (generals) requirements in particular, it really doesn't matter where they are completed as long as they transfer. You might as well save some money...and speaking of saving, here is an example:
Tuition at University of ABC = $1700 per course while tuition at local community college = $700. There is a difference of $1000 per course in that example. Now, assume a person takes 10 courses from the community college. That's a savings of $10,000 and a few years less of student loan payments...Now, the caveat with this is that a person needs to know that the courses will transfer ahead of time, so get the approvals in writing.
Pro Tip: There may be different residency requirements too, one for the number of four-year institutional credits and one for the actual number of credits needed to be earned at the school itself that you are attending. By doing some research a person could stand to save thousands of dollars and quite possibly tens of thousands of dollars off of the sticker price of college tuition.
So, there is one of the many secrets that colleges don't want you to know. It pays to do some research to see how things can be connected together to save you tuition costs in the long-run by attending two different institutions at the same time.
Happy saving!
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