[Rally]

My nominal cost of attendance started ~45k and finished ~54k. What I actually paid was quite a bit lower, though the aid wars didn't really kick in until my sophomore year (and my brother started attending college too, which helped a lot), so my freshman year I had to pay a pretty substantial fraction of that, afterward not quite as much.

Pretty big difference between then and the stone ages, when mastodons roamed campus.

Some of it is just relative.  When the mastodons (we didn't worry about them; it was the saber tooth that could mess you up) and I roamed campus, gas was $.19/gallon, as was hamburger, mock chicken was a real thing because real chicken was more expensive, a bottle of Jack Daniels cost $4.75 (Black Label, not that cheap Green Label stuff) and Coquilles St. Jacques cost $2.75 at L'Ommies.  When our son was born 5 years later I had to get a student loan to cover the uninsured portion of the hospital and doctor costs.  $600.00.  Upon GSB graduation a friend of mine bought a 3 BR in Palo Alto, and my uncle built a 2000 SF home on an acres of apricots in Los Altos Hills for $60,000.  It was on Mandoli  Lane; you could look it up.  Same lot,  VERY different house nowadays.  My best job offer with an MBA was $16,000 plus a car; P&G offered me $12, and Target/Federated Dept. Stores offered $10.8.  Of course we still had to walk through 10 foot snow drifts to collect the mail.

[Rally]

My nominal cost of attendance started ~45k and finished ~54k. What I actually paid was quite a bit lower, though the aid wars didn't really kick in until my sophomore year (and my brother started attending college too, which helped a lot), so my freshman year I had to pay a pretty substantial fraction of that, afterward not quite as much.

Pretty big difference between then and the stone ages, when mastodons roamed campus.

Some of it is just relative.  When the mastodons (we didn't worry about them; it was the saber tooth that could mess you up) and I roamed campus, gas was $.19/gallon, as was hamburger, mock chicken was a real thing because real chicken was more expensive, a bottle of Jack Daniels cost $4.75 (Black Label, not that cheap Green Label stuff) and Coquilles St. Jacques cost $2.75 at L'Ommies.  When our son was born 5 years later I had to get a student loan to cover the uninsured portion of the hospital and doctor costs.  $600.00.  Upon GSB graduation a friend of mine bought a 3 BR in Palo Alto, and my uncle built a 2000 SF home on an acres of apricots in Los Altos Hills for $60,000.  It was on Mandoli  Lane; you could look it up.  Same lot,  VERY different house nowadays.  My best job offer with an MBA was $16,000 plus a car; P&G offered me $12, and Target/Federated Dept. Stores offered $10.8.  Of course we still had to walk through 10 foot snow drifts to collect the mail.