Board of Trustees sets tuition for 2007-08

The Stanford University Board of Trustees on Monday set rates for tuition, room and board for the 2007-08 academic year, raising total undergraduate charges 5.17 percent to $45,608, compared with $43,361 in the current academic year.

The trustees set the undergraduate tuition rate at $34,800, a 5.46 percent increase from $32,994 this year. The standard undergraduate room rate rose 5.25 percent to $5,863 from $5,571. The standard board rate increased 3.1 percent to $4,945 from $4,796.

It is important to note that the money the university collects from tuition covers only about 60 percent of the costs of educating an undergraduate. However, tuition remains an important source of funding. It ensures that Stanford attracts and retains the best faculty and students while providing the highest quality teaching and research facilities.

Stanford also offers one of the best financial aid plans in the country. It is one of the few private universities with a "need-blind" admission policy that ensures students are accepted regardless of their ability to pay.

In the 2005-06 academic year, the last year for which numbers are available, 76.6 percent of undergraduates received financial aid from a variety of internal and external sources, and 41.3 percent received need-based scholarships from Stanford.

Graduate student tuition increased 5.46 percent to $34,800 for the 2007-08 academic year. Tuition for engineering graduate students also rose 5.46 percent to $37,110. Law school tuition increased 5.5 percent to $39,500. Tuition for medical students rose 4.5 percent to $41,620. At the Graduate School of Business, tuition for entering MBA students increased 5.09 percent, to $45,921. Second-year MBA students will pay $43,380, the same amount they paid in 2006-07, under a new structure in which students pay the same rate during each of their two years of study.

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