[danteembermage]

Unfortunately you public in-state advice is almost now outdated; many privates are cost-competitive with public schools and it's not because the private schools are cheap. e.g.:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/nyregion/seton-hall-univer...

This is definitely a trend in private education pricing as sticker shock is a real problem for students considering private schools and the privates compete for the same students the publics do.

[noise]

Not entirely. From the article - 31,440 for Seton, 10,104 for Rutgers. They are saying max merit aid is 21,000 at Seton, so tuition w/max merit aid is 10,440. I don't know about Rutgers specifically, but it's not uncommon for public state schools to offer up to 8,000-10,000 merit aid, covering the bulk of the tuition. So you'd be looking at paying 10k/yr vs 0-2k/yr, still a huge difference.

This assumes no need-based financial aid, and doesn't touch on housing, which is assumed to be 10-13k these days regardless of public or private.