OK, follow-up question on this topic.
What kind of expenses are we looking at the first year?
Any parents on here paying for their child for the first time at Iowa State? I'm trying to figure out how much we will need to expect that first year or two. Room/Board/Books for the standard 12 hours. My wife thinks dropping my club membership is the way to pay for it and of course I would rather not do that.
I have a third-year daughter at ISU. First, let's just say it isn't inexpensive.
Am guessing if you have a golf club membership you aren't likely going to qualify for any need-based aid/grants. We're by no means wealthy ourselves, and we didn't qualify for need-based aid. Our daughter got a little bit of academic scholarship. We had her take out some student loan (I believe she should have some skin in the game), and the rest we covered from college funds and savings. For her first year when she was in a dorm with a standard meal plan we paid around $5,500 per semester, so $11k for the year for tuition, room, board that we paid out of our own funds.
I was surprised at how inexpensive books were/are. In my day they were crazy expensive, but hers were just a few hundred bucks for the year. That was nice. Something to keep in mind is just the day-to-day living costs that you may not think about when planning. My thinking was 'she has a meal plan, her food is covered'... nope. She'd still want to go out with friends to Blaze, Big Acai, Chick fil A, etc. So we helped out with that too.
Is your kid going to have a car? Ours did not her first two years but if yours will that'd be another expense... parking, gas, parking tickets, etc. Is yours going to be in a frat/sorority? Not sure if they're all the same but our daughter's sorority her first year was around $200/month minimum (with additional costs when they buy house apparel or stuff for Greek events), then that jumped to >$900/month her second year when she lived in the house.
Basic rule-of-thumb I've learned to date is whenever I think I have it figured out how much something is going to cost, plan on it costing more.