The amount of money some colleges charge per year boggles the mind.

Danielle Douglas-Gabriel of the Washington Post.

What happens when you find out a year of college costs $71,000

Private colleges are expensive. Many are double, if not triple, the price of public universities. Still, $71,000 a year is a lot of money. That’s the estimated total cost of attendance at New York University for the 2015-2016 academic year. And it’s not far off from what it costs to go to other private schools these days.

The sticker price at NYU gained attention earlier this week when incoming freshmen, Nia Mirza, started a petition to get the school to lower the cost of attendance. Mirza, a 19-year-old from Pakistan, claims the price went up after she committed to early admission to the class of 2019. She said she thought it would cost roughly $64,000 to attend the tony private school.

But NYU spokesman John Beckman said the school explained to early decision candidates that the cost of attendance was based on the current term and was subject to change once the annual budget was completed. He said that the students were actually quoted $66,542. And the school included $2,044 in expected travel and transportation expenses in the latest estimate for the first time to give families a better picture of the cost of going to NYU and living in New York City.

“We now have more students going back and forth to Brooklyn because of the merger with Polytechnic School of Engineering, and students had been asking us to include travel expenses to better calculate their financial aid packages,” he said. “Students are not paying more to the university because of this change.”