College cost calculator: project tuition, housing, and fees across all your years of study, with savings and aid gaps made clear. Free, editable rates, no signup.
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12 years out at 4% inflation
What this means for your numbers: Inflation adds $22,800/year to the worked example's cost over 12 years, 60% growth. Every year of delay costs roughly $1,900 of annual cost at 4%.
Illustrative breakdown using the worked example above. The calculator computes your own numbers with the same formula.
The compounding math, worked through
The calculator charges year 1 at full tuition, then multiplies by (1 + inflation/100) before each following year. Take tuition of $20,000, 4 years, 4% inflation. Year 1 costs $20,000. Year 2 is $20,000 x 1.04 = $20,800. Year 3 is $20,800 x 1.04 = $21,632. Year 4 is $21,632 x 1.04 = $22,497.28.
Sum the four years: $20,000 + $20,800 + $21,632 + $22,497.28 = $84,929.28, which the tool rounds and displays as $84,929. Note the result is higher than the naive shortcut of 4 x $20,000 x 1.04 = $83,200, because inflation compounds on top of prior increases rather than applying once. The gap grows with time: at 5% inflation over 4 years it is about $1,000, but over 6 years the compounding curve bends visibly upward. If you enter 0% inflation the calculator reduces to simple multiplication of tuition by years.
What the sticker total leaves out
The output is a tuition-only figure, and tuition is often the smaller half of the bill. College Board's 2024-25 averages put published tuition and fees at $11,610 per year for in-state public four-year students versus $43,350 for private nonprofits, but average total charges including room, board, books and transportation run roughly $29,910 and $62,990 respectively, so living costs add far more at a public school than the tool shows.
Inflation is also a guess, not a constant. Published tuition inflation ran near 8% in the early 1980s, fell under 2% in 1998-2000, and hovered around 2-3% through the late 2010s before a post-2020 spike, so a single fixed rate over 6 years can miss the actual path by thousands of dollars. Finally, most students never pay sticker price: NCES data shows about 87% of first-time full-time undergraduates receive some aid, and net price after grants is typically 25-50% below the published figure. Treat the result as a planning ceiling, then subtract expected aid from your own school's net price calculator.
