College Costs You Didn't Know About

  After applying to 14 institutions of higher learning over Thanksgiving break (yes, 14) my parents and I quickly learned that the cost of college is not only tuition plus room & board.
  In order to get into most colleges in the United States, a standardized test is required: either the ACT or SAT. The SAT costs $51 to register for and the ACT plus writing $54.50. I took the SAT once and registered for the ACT, missed it, and had to pay an additional fee to reschedule my testing date (plus $23). This brings my total to $128.50 before I even visited a single campus.
  Of the 14 schools I applied to, most of them I had acquired fee waivers for, whether they were sent to me, or I earned them through a campus visit or survey, and the grand total of sending in my applications to college was $220. Now, here is this statistic I found online:

According to U.S. News & World Report, the average cost of application fees provided by 1,391 ranked colleges in Spring 2012 was $37.88.

  If I was required to pay the average application fee for all 14 applications, my grand application total would have been $530.32. This is greater than the average deposit for college. Taking into account my actual costs, after applications and taking standardized tests, my investment at this point into higher education was $345.50.
  Along with having to pay simply to write a few scribbles and fill in several ovals on the pieces of paper that were officially distributed to me, I now had to prove my scores that I said were mine, were really mine. I decided to only send my ACT scores, seeing as I already invested more into them and performed better comparatively to the SAT, and each college I would send my scores to would cost $12 for a regular report and $16.50 on a priority report-I chose the regular report. 12 dollars multiplied by my 14 colleges equals $168. Again, I found a way to pay less, asking each college if I could send my score report through the high school, and not directly from the testing agency. Half of them allowed this, saving my parents $84.
  In conclusion, my theoretical total cost of college even before being accepted was $826.82. In reality, my parents and I payed $432.50 (saving us $394.32). It seems as if people are somehow being financially discouraged from attending college. Before even considering the tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, my investment into higher learning should have been almost $1,000. Considering the minimum wage in New York is eight dollars, to have payed for this all by myself, I would have had to work 125 hours. This is about 5.21 days, not considering breaks. Our country has to do something about this educational epidemic before its citizens realize the true and hidden costs of attending college.