Graduate School Tuitions

I just looked into, for the first time, how much it will acutally cost to go to graduate school. I learned that tuition at my first three choices are: Stanford and U of Chicago is about $10,000, and at Wisconsin $12,000 for non residents and $4,000 for residents. At the same time my current U (UCSB) it is under $3,000. (All of these numbers refer to fee per quarters except at Wisconsin.) At the moment I am quite shocked about the prices. I will need to rethink my intentions.At the same time I am starting to make friends at UCSB mostly among the graduate students. Up till now I assumed that it would take 3-5 years to earn a PhD. However most of these studenst are doing it in 6-7. Which might mean $200,000 just in tuition. I am not ready to go into that kind of debt. And I virtually have no savings beyond this year. I am aware that graduate schools might offer me grants or non-loan financial aid, if I am ranking high enough in their eyes. So I will still apply to the best schools when the time is right, but if they don’t offer me siginficant help I might have to stick to something I can afford. (Even that would mean accumualting debts in the tens of thousands of dollars.) I suspect that the TAship would pay for my living expenses, including housing, food and other, but not my (high) tuition. (Or the other way around. It might pay for my tuition but then I need money to live on.)