Cost of Attendance

Your entire financial aid award (loans, grants, work-study, scholarships, outside assistance, private loans) cannot exceed your estimated Cost of Attendance, even though your actual expenses may be more than what we estimate.

You could receive the full estimated Cost of Attendance, or you may receive less. In cases where you have additional expenses that aren’t included in the Cost of Attendance, you can ask us about Budget Increase (view webpage to learn more) options. Examples of extra expenses are the purchase of a computer, daycare, medical, or significant transportation expenses.

How Cost of Attendance is Determined

Your Cost of Attendance is estimated based on your overall expenses for a year. The estimate includes the direct costs that you can expect, like tuition, fees and housing. It also considers indirect costs like books and supplies, transportation and personal expenses.

Your Cost of Attendance takes into consideration:

• Your degree – undergraduate, graduate
• Your residency – Idaho resident, non-resident
• Your enrollment level – full-time, three-quarter time, half-time, less than half-time
• Your housing plans – on campus, off campus, living with parents
  • First year students – housing will default to on campus, unless specified differently on your admissions application.
  • Second year and above students – housing will default to your prior year housing option. Updates will be made for students with any on campus housing charges, or through a housing update request.

Enrollment Impact on Financial Aid

Your initial aid award will be based on full time enrollment (12+ undergraduate, 9+ graduate credits) and assigned a full-time Cost of Attendance budget. If you attend less than full-time, you may see reductions to your aid based on Cost of Attendance adjustments.

In some situations, when awarded or disbursed financial aid exceeds the Cost of Attendance, you may need to repay some financial aid or have spring loans reduced so that you stay within your allotted budget.

Checking your Budgeted Cost of Attendance

Many plans require students to provide them a Cost of Attendance to withdraw funds. To check your Cost of Attendance:

• Log into your Student Center, located under “My Resources” in your my.BoiseState left menu. (Pro tip! Use the gear icon next to “My Resources” to rearrange your links and drag your Student Center to the top.)
• Once you are logged in, click on the Student Homepage tile, then click on the Financial Aid tile.
• On the View Financial Aid page, select the appropriate Aid Year from the Aid Year column in the table that is displayed. Any year with available data will be displayed as a blue link.
• Click the Budget, Resources and Need link, listed in the bottom section of the page, below the aid year and term tables.
  • Click on the BLUE amount total after Estimated Financial Aid Budget to get a breakdown of your Cost of Attendance calculation.