College Financing Plan

Introduction

The College Financing Plan (CFP) is a federal tool for comparing college cost and aid data and your Estimated Total Net Cost after grants/scholarships in a standardized federal format.  

• This is optional online tool.
• If you choose to use it, please carefully follow these instructions.
• (It was previously called the Federal Shopping Sheet.)

Understanding the Cost Data

The CFP is not an estimated Towson University bill, and all costs are based on our estimated 2021-2022 rates.   For more information about these estimates, see our Cost of Attendance budgets.

We offer several housing and dining plan options with different prices.  We estimated your On-Campus Housing and Meals costs based on a multiple occupancy room in Standard University Housing and our most popular meal plan (14 meals/week plus meal points). For more details see estimated housing and meal plan costs.

For every school, the Net Costs amount on the CFP will be much higher than your estimated college charges because in addition to estimated direct costs (tuition and fees, on-campus room/board) it also includes allowances for other indirect costs that are usually not paid to your school, such as transportation, personal expenses, and off-campus housing and meal costs. 

Because the allowances for these indirect costs vary widely between schools, they can distort comparisons of each school’s Direct Costs.  To avoid these distortions, we encourage you to compare the relative costs of your potential schools based on your estimated Net Direct Costs at each school instead of the total Net Cost (Direct and Indirect) that are listed on the CFP.

To calculate your Net Direct Costs, follow the formulas below.  (This table is not interactive.)

Estimated 2021-2022 Costs	md resident on/off campus	out-of-state on/off campus	md resident living with parents
Tuition & Fees (12-15 units)*	$10,464	$25,516	$10,464
+ On Campus Housing  & Meals*	$13,232	$13,232
= Total Direct Costs*	$23,696	$38,748	$10,464
-Total Grants & Scholarships	-	-	-
= Net Direct Costs	=	=	=

*All of these rates are estimated.  In June 2021, the USM Board of Regents will determine our official 2021-2022 rates.  For more information about these costs, see our Cost of Attendance budgets.

Understanding the Aid Data

The CFP presents grants and scholarships in eight different categories, but your TU Financial Aid Offer will list the actual names of each grant and scholarship that we offered.

Accessing TU’s College Financing Plan (CFP)

1. Log in at: Towson Online Services
2. Choose Self Service and Student Center
3. Below the Finances bar, choose Accept/Decline Awards.
4. Choose the appropriate Aid Year.
5. At the bottom of the Accept/Decline page, choose the College Financing Plan link under Awards.
6. Please ignore the Download button.