Calculators of Each College. All colleges are now required by federal law to have a net price calculator on their website. They allow prospective students to enter information about themselves to find out what students like them paid to attend the institution in the previous year, after taking grants and scholarship aid into account. These calculators have improved in recent years, although some colleges are less than complete in their inclusion of all expense items.

MyinTuition Quick College Cost Estimator (https://myintuition.org/) is much easier to use than the federally mandated calculators. It is used by over 70 top colleges, about two-thirds of which are in the northeast. By answering six simple questions based on those in a college’s CSS Profile, it gives a reasonably accurate estimate of what a family will have to pay at the college.