Seniors are feeling the pinch this year as all of their hard work from the past four years finally pays off.

Senior year is winding down and conversations revolve around where everyone will go to school in the fall.

But many students are realizing their dreams of the perfect college do not come with a perfect price tag.

The original estimate for any college is not the end price when it comes time to pay. Seniors are filling out FAFSA forms, and as they get them back, many seniors are seeing just how much help they are, or are not, getting.

Bridge Magazine created a college calculator that estimates the cost to go to the top 15 public universities in Michigan, depending on the level of income of a student’s family.

After subtracting the amount of financial aid a student would get from the original price, Bridge Magazine came up with the prices of colleges according to a family’s income level. Not included in the chart is private scholarships that students can apply to for financial aid.

Bridge Magazine ranked the colleges according to five levels of income: $30,000 and below, $30,001-$48,000, $48,001-$75,000, $75,001-$110,000, and above $110,000.

Senior Raven Cantrell is going to Ferris State University in the fall. She wishes she had had a resource like this when she had been deciding where she wanted to go to college.

Cantrell said, “This would have been very useful since college is extremely expensive. It would be helpful when picking out the right college because not only would you know what majors they would have, but also how much college would really be.”

However, senior Chase Bailey said, “I did not really care about the the price of the college I wanted to go to. If I choose to go to a school that was expensive, I assumed I would be paying off the loans from it with a good job.”

Bailey is going to Michigan State University in the fall. He believes information like this could be helpful for many students deciding where to go even though it would not have been helpful for him.

The most expensive college for an income level under $30,000 a year is Western Michigan University at $13,575 per year, compared to the least expensive, which is the University of Michigan at $5,529.

Why is this? The U of M gives more money to lower income families, and there is more federal and state aid for those with lower incomes.

Also, may Flint area students qualify for an outright $10,000 scholarship because the Flint area is considered under-represented at the U of M.

However, U of M is the most expensive for families who earn over $110,000 a year, with a yearly price tag of $23,222. The least expensive university for the highest income level is the University of Michigan-Dearborn at $10,693.

Endowment is an important consideration in the amount of financial aid that students get from any school. An endowment is money donated to a university that is invested and later used for scholarships.

The endowment at U of M is $9.7 billion, while a smaller college, like WMU has an endowment of $262 million. This leaves more room for universities with larger endowments to give more money to students.

Smaller universities do not have large endowments, so the amount given to students is less, forcing students to pay more.

Michigan is also one of the lowest ranked states, 41st out of the 50 states, for investing in financial aid to students.

At just $9.37 per state resident, Michigan is well below the national average. Florida is the 25th ranked state in student financial aid investment with $24.22 per state resident.

Along with a low financial aid investment rate, Michigan has a low rate of college graduates. Many students do not stay in college after the financial aid money runs out.

To change this, students need to have the safety of knowing they can go through college and not have a mountain of debt when they graduate.

There is a lot of help out there for students who wish to go to any college, and all of it starts with research.

These big universities in Michigan may have a sticker price that seems extremely high or fairly moderate, but the real price tag can be much different.