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Edited to add: the reason it's worth discussing is because people shouldn't think that applying for student loans will increase the cost of attendance. It won't. The costs of public universities are fixed, publicly listed, and don't change based on your need for financial aid. If you need student loans to pay tuition, it is ok. Just try to avoid financing housing and food costs of at all possible.
Something about the story here is off. I work in higher Ed, have multiple degrees I paid for partly with grants, scholarships, and student loans.
The FAFSA is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The way it works is you report your financial assets and your parents income (unless you are considered an independent student, over 25, etc), and the FAFSA calculates an expected family contribution towards your education and determines eligibility for Pell grants, subsidized student loans, and unsubsidized student loans.
The school you are admitted to looks at the total costs of attending school, and then calculates the amount of student loans you need after applying grants and scholarships.
In the story above, the only way to get the same number for student loans (or parent loans) poping out is if the cost of attendance is identical. So something about the story smells from the start. Then it ends with them applying as a "regular" student and just paying tuition. But there is no tuition difference, or enrollment difference. FAFSA is just financial aid and doesn't impact what the costs are at all or what kind of student you are enrolled as.
So if tuition at Oregon was $10k, applying for a FAFSA wouldn't change that. All it would do is give you access to grants and student loans.
Being generous, maybe they were confused by the attendance costs including things like dorms and meal plans. But they could have opted out of those costs, just like they did at Oregon.
Long way of saying that the story just doesn't match reality so I would take it with a grain of salt. Higher Ed has many faults, but this story is more one person's confused anecdote rather than an exemplar of what is wrong with the system.
You're right--this doesn't make sense at all.
When I was applying to colleges (public universities) the tuition was the tuition. Schools didn't care whether the money came from scholarships, federal subsidized student loans, unsubsidized student loans, grants, parental loans, or cash.
I don't even know how what the OP is proposing would work. Tuition is public and you would already know what type of loans you would be eligible for. Utilizing FAFSA wouldn't suddenly make a public university 46k/yr more expensive.
Well, it is our story and I stick by with what I wrote, and, yeah, it was including the dorm and all of that.
I just found it weirdly suspicious that all three schools settled on the same number, almost like it wasn't the cost of education, but rather how much they thought they could milk us for.
But using student aid doesn't change that cost. Now, UC Davis and Lewis and Clark State college are both on the expensive side, but they publicly list the cost of attendance. All the FAFSA and their financial aid system does is take that cost, and match it with available aid.
It really sounds like you were offered similar aid packages at multiple universities that included tuition, fees, housing, and meal plans, were sticker shocked, and went to a fourth university and just paid tuition and found cheaper living arrangements. Which is a great way to do it, but not a fair apples to apples comparison.
The reason the distinction is important is because you could have opted to pay just the tuition like you did, but using grants (which aren't paid back) and student loans. Some people can't afford to pay for school out of pocket and they shouldn't come away from this thread thinking that applying for student loans increases their costs, which they don't.