The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has published a preliminary state-by-state list of maximum in-state tuition and fees, a tally that serves as an early indicator of how much the new GI Bill may cost the federal government. The numbers contain some surprises and bode well for both veterans and the private colleges they may wish to attend.

Under the new GI Bill, which was enacted last summer and will go into effect in August, eligible veterans will receive student aid up to the cost of tuition and fees at the most expensive public four-year college in their state, as well as housing assistance and a $1,000 yearly stipend for books and other materials.

The VA’s figures are, in some cases, much higher than predicted. The list shows four institutions at which a student could spend more than $10,000 on fees alone in one semester, with Tennessee topping the list at $15,130 in maximum fees. The numbers are only preliminary, however, and several are being reviewed.

Keith M. Wilson, director of the VA’s education service, said this month that it was hard to tell how much the department would spend on educational benefits until this list was published. He acknowledged that it was a work in progress because some terms — mainly what would be counted as an eligible “fee” — had yet to be determined.

Although the government may end up spending more than it had anticipated, the high tuitions and fees are good news to colleges that had hoped to participate in the Yellow Ribbon Program. The program helps veterans who want to take their aid and apply it to a private college, graduate program, or out-of-state college with higher costs than their aid covers.

Designed to provide more options to veterans, the program allows colleges to enter fund-matching agreements with the department to help defray the extra cost that the veterans would otherwise have to pay on their own. Some private colleges have worried that low figures for the state tuitions and fees would mean they and their students would bear a greater financial burden from having a larger gap in tuition rates to overcome.

But if the final list of tuitions and fees resembles this preliminary one, veterans in some states would have a much smaller gap between what they are entitled to and what their college of choice charges. —Megan Eckstein