As students are applying to colleges, whether that be as an undergraduate or graduate student, application fees are inevitable. In fact, college application fees can range anywhere from no fee to over $100.
This may not be bad, but if you’re applying to multiple schools, which is recommended to increase your chances of getting accepted, those costs add up. For those who may be financially struggling and struggling to pay for college as is, they simply may not be able to afford additional fees from applying to colleges.
As the cost of college is already expensive, being $38,270 on average per student per year, students shouldn’t have to pay a fee just to even apply.
These application fees are non-refundable, so if you don’t get into the school, that’s just money wasted. While I understand colleges need to make money, that should come from students paying tuition and not from application fees.
As someone who, within the last few months, was applying to graduate school, I had to pay my fair share of application fees.
The fees I had to pay ranged from $60 to $75. While I was lucky enough to be able to get some of the fees waived, I did not get all of them waived. In addition, some students may not be eligible for fee waivers. Some of the schools I had to pay $75 for, and I didn’t even get accepted into them. Therefore, I lost the money.
Schools should either not make students pay the fees, give a refund if the student doesn’t get accepted into the school or only make the student pay if they get accepted. It’s not fair for students to lose the money because they didn’t get accepted.
Typically, when you pay for something, you receive a service or product. However, paying for an application for college is something that is unknown, because there is no guarantee you’ll get in. This, along with other factors such as writing essays for admission, can impact students’ mental health, particularly among low-income students.
People don’t have to pay to apply to a job or internship, so they shouldn’t have to pay to apply to college either.
