Just when she thought she'd finally paid her spring semester tab, freshman Amanda Simeone got another bill from her school, Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., last month. It was a $50 invoice for the pianist who had spent extra time helping her rehearse a choral piece for a recital. "It was a little bit of a shock," says the music major. "I thought it would be free."

No such luck. Though colleges charge plenty in tuition and usually tack on a couple hundred dollars' worth of activity and other fees to their semiannual bills, very few are as all inclusive as Club Med. Increasingly, budget-strapped colleges are socking students with a variety of a la carte fees.

Activity fees. Time was, if you made the varsity basketball team, the school would cover the uniform, travel, and other playing costs. In a first, Glenville State College in West Virginia last year imposed a $100 fee on every varsity athlete. A donor has picked up the athletes' costs so far. Other schools haven't gone that route yet, but students who want to participate in other extracurricular activities should expect to pay something out of their own pocket these days. If you're not good enough to make the varsity soccer team at Penn State University but want to play club soccer, it will cost you $260. The university's spelunking club, the Nittany Grotto cavers, charges $15 a year. And you have to buy your own flashlight. Joining a fraternity can cost hundreds more: New pledges to Tau Epsilon Phi at Florida State University pay $50 on top of the annual national fee of $400.

Special class fees. For many colleges, tuition covers only the basic lectures. Anything on top of that may cost more. While Hartwick does not charge chemistry lab fees, which are common at other schools, it does assess a fee on students who take additional private music lessons. And at many other schools, such additional expenses are rising. At California State University-Long Beach, for example, the extra fees students pay for geology class field trips and film class screenings have been climbing in tandem with costs, says Bursar Nancy Eckhous.

Administrative fees. Colleges can no longer afford to indulge wasteful or tardy students. After watching its paper costs skyrocket, the University of Oregon, which has been attempting to hold the line on fees, started charging for computer lab printouts in 2002. And woe to those who dillydally before deciding to drop a class. Some private schools demand that students who wait until the third week of school to drop a class forfeit 40 percent of the tuition, an average of--gulp!--$800. -Kim Clark