STUDENT FINANCE & COLLEGE PLANNING

Drexel University Cost: 2026-27 Tuition, Co-op, and What You’ll Actually Pay

Updated September 2026 · Written by Shivam, Software Engineer and Founder · Figures sourced from Drexel University’s official Drexel Central cost pages and Drexel’s undergraduate financing site

Drexel University’s published cost of attendance for a first-year student in 2026-27 is $84,896 — $63,078 in tuition, $2,420 in fees, and $19,398 for housing and food. But Drexel’s cost structure has a wrinkle almost no other private university has: its signature five-year co-op program means many students go entire terms paying no tuition at all, just fees and living costs. Use the calculator below, built from Drexel’s official 2026-27 rate tables, to model your own situation — including co-op terms — then read on for the full breakdown of tuition, housing, financial aid, and how Drexel compares to similar schools.

Drexel University Cost Calculator

Drexel University Tuition and Fees for 2026-27

Drexel runs on a quarter system rather than semesters, and its official 2026-27 undergraduate tuition and fee schedule bills full-time students in four- and five-year programs $21,026 per term. Across the three billed terms of a standard academic year — fall, winter, and spring — that comes to $63,078 in tuition, plus a $790-per-term General University Fee that adds another $2,370, plus a one-time $300 First-Year Program Fee. Put together with immunization and miscellaneous charges, Drexel’s own Investing in a Drexel Education page lists total first-year fees at $2,420.

Drexel doesn’t publish a clean year-over-year percentage the way some universities do, but third-party trackers estimate recent annual increases in the 3%-5% range — consistent with typical private-university trends nationally. That matters most when you’re projecting the full Drexel University cost across a five-year co-op degree rather than judging only the entry-year sticker price.

Figures reflect Drexel’s official Drexel Central tuition and fee rate pages for the 2026-27 academic year. The Board of Trustees reserves the right to alter tuition and fees without notice — always confirm current-year numbers directly with Drexel Central.

Full Cost of Attendance: Housing and Dining, Line by Line

Drexel’s official Housing and Dining Costs page breaks first-year on-campus living down to the quarter, and the numbers add up faster than a single annual figure suggests. Hybrid-style halls — Bentley, Kelly, and Millennium — run $4,015 per quarter, while suite-style halls — Caneris, North Hall, Race Street Residences, and Van Rensselaer — run $4,310 per quarter. Multiply either by the three billed quarters (fall, winter, spring) and you get $12,045-$12,930 a year in housing alone, before dining.

First-year students are required to carry a dining plan. The Weekly 14 plan with $250 in Dining Dollars runs $2,275 a quarter; the two All Access tiers run $2,450 and $2,640 a quarter depending on the Dining Dollars allotment. Combined with a hybrid hall, a typical first-year housing-and-dining package lands close to Drexel’s own published $19,398 average, though your exact total depends on which hall and plan you’re assigned.

How Drexel’s Co-op Program Changes Your Bill

This is the part of the Drexel University cost picture that genuinely sets Drexel apart from Fordham, Lehigh, or almost any other private university: Drexel’s signature co-op program means many undergraduates spend one or more terms each year working a paid, full-time co-op job instead of taking classes — and Drexel does not bill tuition for those terms.

Per Drexel’s own guidance: if you’re enrolled in classes, you’re billed for tuition, fees, and any applicable housing and food. If you’re enrolled in co-op instead, you are not billed for tuition, but you still pay University fees and any housing or food costs for that period. Over a five-year co-op degree with two or three six-month co-op cycles, that structure can meaningfully lower the total tuition paid across the degree compared with a straight four-year billing schedule — even though the degree itself takes longer to finish. It’s also why a flat “cost per year” figure can be misleading for Drexel specifically: your actual bill depends heavily on which terms in a given year are class terms versus co-op terms.

Cost by School and Program

“Drexel University cost” means something very different depending on the program, because Drexel bills undergraduate, graduate, Law, and Medicine students on entirely separate rate schedules.

Graduate programs

Per-credit graduate rates vary by college. Representative 2026-27 rates include $1,510/credit for most Arts and Sciences programs, $1,400/credit for Engineering and Computer Science, $1,391-$1,427/credit for LeBow College of Business MBA programs, and $1,571/credit for most Nursing and Health Professions programs — each with a $280 full-time (or $140 part-time) General Fee per term on top.

Thomas R. Kline School of Law

The JD program bills an annual flat rate of $58,710 for 2026-27, or $1,957 per credit hour for students registered below 9 credits, plus a Law Program Fee and General Fee each semester.

College of Medicine

The MD program bills $39,119 per semester in tuition — $78,238 across a standard fall-and-spring academic year — plus several hundred dollars a semester in general and activity fees. Other College of Medicine graduate programs, such as the various MS tracks, bill considerably lower per-semester rates in the $8,000-$18,000 range.

Online undergraduate programs

Drexel prices several fully online undergraduate majors well below its on-campus part-time rate — as low as $497 per credit hour in fields like Psychology, Communication, and Criminology & Justice Studies, a discount Drexel describes as up to a 52% savings off the base part-time rate.

Financial Aid at Drexel

Drexel’s aid numbers are unusually strong on paper. In the 2025-26 academic year, Drexel offered financial support to 100% of its incoming first-year students, and to 97% of fall 2025 transfer students who were seeking to complete their first bachelor’s degree. Recently reported figures show:

• 100% of incoming first-year students received some form of financial support in 2025-26.
• $40,814 was the average scholarship and grant aid offered to first-year students for fall 2025.
• 97% of eligible fall 2025 transfer students received financial support.
• $32,378 was the average scholarship and grant aid offered to fall 2025 transfer students.

These figures include federal, state, and institutional aid combined, and don’t include the tuition savings from co-op terms described above — meaning a student’s real effective cost per year can end up considerably lower than either number implies on its own.

Net Price vs. Sticker Price: Why the Calculator Matters

Sticker price is the number everyone panics about, and it’s why so many families search for the real Drexel University cost before applying. Net price — what an aided student actually pays after grants and scholarships — is the number that determines whether Drexel fits your budget. Third-party trackers estimate Drexel’s average net price for aided students somewhere in the mid-$50,000s, though your own figure depends entirely on your family’s documented need and the specific package Drexel offers.

Here’s the practical sequence worth following if you’re evaluating Drexel against other schools:

1. Run Drexel’s official Net Price Calculator using your family’s actual income, assets, and household size — not a generic estimate.
2. Model your co-op schedule against your billing terms, since tuition-free co-op terms materially change your true annual cost in a way most net price tools don’t fully capture.
3. Compare that net price against every other school on your list, including tools like the Fordham cost calculator, Howard cost calculator, or Lehigh cost guide if those schools are also on your list.
4. Factor in the extra year. A five-year co-op degree means an extra year of fees, housing, and food even in terms when tuition is $0 — worth weighing against the paid co-op income and work experience most students earn along the way.

How Drexel’s Cost Compares to Similar Universities

Drexel’s $63,078 tuition sits well above the College Board’s Trends in College Pricing report, which put the national average for private nonprofit four-year tuition and fees at roughly $45,000 for the 2025-26 academic year. That positions the Drexel University cost alongside other mid-size private research universities with strong co-op or experiential-learning models, though the tuition-free co-op terms are a structural difference most peer comparisons don’t fully account for.

Where Drexel differs most from national averages isn’t the sticker price itself but the co-op billing structure — a mechanism that effectively removes one or more tuition bills entirely from a typical degree, something few sticker-price comparisons account for.

Common Mistakes Families Make When Budgeting for Drexel

Getting the Drexel University cost picture wrong usually comes down to a handful of avoidable assumptions:

• Assuming a flat “cost per year.” Because of co-op, a Drexel student’s actual annual bill can swing significantly depending on how many terms that year are class terms versus tuition-free co-op terms.
• Comparing Drexel’s four-year sticker cost against schools without co-op. A fair comparison needs to account for the fifth year and the tuition-free terms together, not just tuition alone.
• Overlooking the housing/dining combination. The gap between the cheapest hall-and-plan combination and the most expensive can run over $1,500 a year.
• Assuming online tuition equals on-campus tuition. Several online undergraduate majors are priced at roughly half the standard part-time rate.
• Forgetting program-specific fees. Nursing, Health Professions, and several graduate programs carry additional lab, equipment, or program fees on top of standard tuition and General Fees.
• Not checking co-op billing before budgeting a gap year or reduced course load. Fee and housing charges continue during co-op even though tuition doesn’t.

Frequently Asked Questions

Shivam

Software Engineer and Founder, Sitnit.com

Shivam is a software engineer with 4+ years of experience who builds and maintains every calculator on Sitnit.com, including this one. Each tool’s numbers are checked directly against official sources — in this case, Drexel University’s published 2026-27 Drexel Central rate tables — before publishing, and updated whenever a school announces new rates.