Each term.Andrew Tom receives a term bill, tuition(学费), student center recreation fee, resident activity fee, health insurance.If only the rest of his expenses were as easy to quantify(确定数量).
"It’s like you start out the term With plenty of money and then$20 for dinner out here and $100 at the department store there, it’s gone,” said Tom, a third-year student."And there are so many daily necessary things that you don’t think about until you get there and need it."
From the books to the fashionable clothes, college students say the expenses of college education go well beyond tuition and a dining hail meal plan.Many say they arrive on campus only to be frightened by unexpected costs from sports fees to the actual price of a slice of pizza.
Balancing a job with schoolwork, especially at colleges known for their heavy workloads like Harvard and MIT, can be tough.So can the pressure that students of-ten feel in order to financially go along with their friends.
"When you get dragged along shopping, you're going to spend money; if you, get dragged to a party and everyone wants to take a taxi but you are cheap and want to take a bus, chances are you’ll end up sharing the fee for the taxi,” said Tom."I guess you could say no, but no one wants to be the only one eating in the snack bar while our friends are out to dinner."
Max Cohen, a biology major at MIT, said he is used to watching fellow students spend$40 a night to have dinner delivered or$50 during a night out at a bar.During the school’s recent spring break, friends on trips for the week posted away messages that read like a world map-Paris, Rome, Tokyo."Meanwhile I stay at home and work,” said Cohen."I didn't realize when I came here how much money I would spend or how hard I would have to work to get by."
It is a lesson some younger students learn quickly.Others, surrounded by credit card offers, go into debt, or worse, are forced to leave school.
"A lot of people don’t think twice about how much they spend,” said a first
year student at M1T,” and you feel the pressure sometimes to go along with them."
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