Grades 9–12Ages 14–18 · Unit 4.7 · Paying for College or Trade School
Sticker, gift, net: a free college cost worksheet.
School A publishes $62,000 a year. School B publishes $28,000. Most students vote for B, and most are wrong — once gift aid is subtracted, School A costs the family $8,500 a year less. Two pages: the vote first, then the arithmetic that overturns it.
No account. No email. Nothing collected about your child.
What is on the page
- Page one: the vote, on published prices alone
- Page two: cost of attendance minus gift aid equals net price
- Both schools worked through the formula
- An answer page, including why a loan is not gift aid
What it teaches
- That a published price is not what a family pays
- What cost of attendance actually includes
- That gift aid is never repaid and a loan always is
How to run it
Make them vote on page one before they turn over. The whole lesson lives in the gap between the vote and the arithmetic, and it disappears if they see the second page first.
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Where it comes from
Unit 4.7 · Paying for College or Trade School of a 266-lesson curriculum.
This sheet is one activity, unchanged, from Financial Foundations™. Teachers can run a free five-week pilot with one class. Families can take the Family Edition home.