The Cost of Applying to College

Attending university overseas is expensive. The size of the five digit number you pay per annum can vary depending on where you go and what you do, so most people resort to scholarships, bank loans or the daddy-mummy fund.

Applying for university alone, however, can already be costly. If you're just applying to NUS or SMU and to no others, your costs are significantly lower - the application fee is only SGD$10 or $15 respectively.

If you are applying overseas and intending to apply to quite a few, that's when the hole in the pocket starts growing.

Most US universities process applications via the Common Application (CommonAPP). Every time you click the submit button that's anywhere between USD$70 to $80 charged to your credit card. If you apply to more than four places, you will also need to send your SAT scores (CollegeBoard allows you to send four score reports for free so long you do when registering). Any additional SAT report sent normally is USD$10, but if you, like all good students, procrastinate and have to send a rush report, that will be USD$29.

[Vio Note: In most cases, there is no need to send a rush report. Most colleges take time to process all the applications and will not begin reading till later. However, if you are taking the SAT in the last possible month, you might want to check with your college counselor. They know best.]

If you are applying for financial aid, ironical as it might sound, you will also need to pay a fee to send a document called the CSS Profile. It's essentially a description of how much money your family has, how much money you spend on food, how much dog food your pet consumes (kidding) and such. That's USD$25 for the first university, and $18 for all subsequent universities.

If you are also applying to the UK, a good number of universities use the UCAS system. Applying to only one college costs GBP$11. You can apply for a maximum of five colleges, and the total cost of that is GBP$21.

I've not accounted for two things here. Sending supplementary material by mail, and colleges that don't use these systems.

Sending supplementary material by mail applies if you need to send transcripts, research reports or teacher recs. manually. NUSHS will not mail for you for local universities. The cost of sending an A4 sized envelope with about 20 pages of printed matter inside is between SGD$2-4 for registered mail. To overseas locations it can be double that.

Colleges that don't use CommonAPP or UCAS are places like MIT, UCBerkeley, Cambridge and Oxford. MIT levies about the same fee as CommonAPP. Cambridge digs a -bleep- huge hole in your pocket at around SGD$300 for the cost of the TSA and interview.

So lets assume we play the part of the good kiasu Singaporean and apply to 6 US universities, more than 1 UK university, MIT, NUS, SMU and Cambridge. Here goes:

6*USD75 = USD450 - CommonAPP
1*USD75 = USD75 - MIT
SGD10+SGD15 = SGD25 - NUS/SMU
1*SGD300 = SGD300 - Cambridge
1*GBP21 = GBP21 - UCAS
1*USD25+5*USD18 = USD115 - CSS Profile
2*USD10 = USD20 - SAT Score Reports (assuming you've sent 4 for free)
SGD20 for all mailing needs

That's about SGD$1237, according to exchange rates at time of writing.

The reason why I'm highlighting these costs is twofold. First is to show the cost involved if you decide to carpet bomb every university you come across. Second is to suggest that maybe that holiday job will come in useful after all. Of course, in the words of the many finaid webpages available, "if undertaking the cost involved presents significant hardship for you and your family, you may request a fee waiver" so long you fill up the appropriate documents.